The More the Merrier

Faced with some serendipitous life shifts, Corey Damen Jenkins brings maximalist might to his new Manhattan home

- DORCIA KELLEY, MICHAEL BOODRO

We all like to think we are in charge of our lives—that we make changes and choices, and the future is in our hands.

Then fate steps in.

In the case of AD100 designer Corey Damen Jenkins, it was a series of events both mundane and monumental that transformed his life. For years, he based his firm just outside Detroit, eventually opening a Manhattan outpost in 2018. He might well have continued that dual existence but for an unexpected development: Within a year of arriving to the Big Apple he met Adam Wasserman, a business and marketing executive, and the man he would marry. And then COVID struck. The lease on Jenkins's Michigan office would soon come to an end, so he made a major decision and shifted his life and work full-time to New York City.