As Vice President of Creative Strategy and Production, I wear two hats. The first hat is what I call “thinking stuff”: I work across departments to synthesize marketing, paid media, creative and content strategy. The second hat is “making stuff”: I oversee our team of Creatives, from directors and copywriters to media creators, designers and developers. By bringing together strategy and creative production, our deliverables capture two things: audience and results. Match made in heaven, right? In a nutshell, I make sure we build a riveting client story, and get that story straight across all touch points, so that audiences get to know brands on an intimate, conversion-driving level.
So it’s a good thing, I suppose, that I was born, raised, and trained as a storyteller.
I grew up just outside of Detroit, the daughter of immigrants, with two (loud) older sisters and no cable. The lack of MTV and HBO meant we were either reading good stories or wreaking enough havoc to make great stories ourselves.
Given my foundational love of character and narrative, I chose to study Psychology and English at university (really, it was a no-brainer). After my undergraduate work, I went on to earn my M.A. in English and Performance Studies from Miami University (Oxford, OH) and then my Ph.D. in English from Indiana University, with top distinctions. Over those years of study, I worked to hone my writing – and taught others how to improve theirs. I also trained in mixed research methods, which I applied to my own scholarship on the media history of medicine, policy and law, science and statistics. I became fascinated by how different media shape our communication strategies, our connections to each other, and how language lives in the world. My graduate work culminated in a dissertation on the emergence of data storytelling. (How do you make people feel anything about numbers? Turns out, some of of our bestselling stories are all about big data.) After defending said dissertation, I accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media and Communication. At Tech, I taught media history, writing and communication strategies to STEM and business-oriented majors. I helped students communicate complex arguments and technical information to both insider and outsider audiences. I taught students how to build more effective presentations, leverage digital media tools for communication, utilize and synthesize data, write and design content for better audience impact.
While teaching and researching at Tech, I began to work with faculty and businesses who needed the same sort of guidance on communicating their research, brands and products strategically to their target audiences. I started writing copy and designing for websites, blogs, executive reports, and other high-impact deliverables. That work quickly turned into consulting with executives on how to build their brand’s story, look and feel, and providing creative direction on full-funnel content marketing. My love for creative strategy led me to cross over into full-time research and storytelling at Big Sea.
When I’m not collaborating with clients or our team of rock-star creatives, well, I’m still making stuff. I’m a member of the historic Atlanta Writers Club, where I workshop original fiction and nonfiction. When my head isn’t bent over the keys or a book, I’m playing cards and board games, cooking, crocheting, or struggling to herd my three rescue animals: Maggie and Merritt the dogs, and Valkyrie the cat.
