About Me

I believe there is no problem that can’t be solved if we just know the right way to talk to one another about it.

Marketing and branding is about building emotional connections between people and places. In my work, I get to know people and institutions really well. I talk to them about what ails them how they talk about themselves to the world, and come up with ways to help them tell their truest story to those who matter the most to them.

I believe all communications should be human- first. Human-first means user-first, audience-first, customer-first, people-first. Every web page, brochure, advertisement, report and meeting should be by human beings, for human beings. We’re not building things for robots.

I believe in empathy. You can’t solve someone else’s problems until you put yourself in their shoes. In order to do that, I listen. I ask questions. I learn about what they think, feel, and do.

I believe that at any given time we must be both teachers and students. I learn from others every day, and I try to pass my knowledge on. It’s a virtuous circle; give and give. I believe in giving back through thought leadership. In the end, it’s good for business too.

I believe in original thinking.

I’m inspired by many people and ideas – but I try hard to be additive rather than derivative in my work. Every time I do something, I do it a little bit differently, try to make it a little bit better. I try to focus on gradual, iterative improvement at all times and allow that to organically drive breakthrough, eureka moments.      

I believe in working really hard and setting healthy boundaries. There have been weeks where I’ve written a blog post while on a plane to make a sales pitch, turned around a set of creative revisions, emailed my team about the project priorities for the week, and then presented a webinar to hundreds of people at institutions around the country once I’m back in my home office. It can be exhausting, but there is nothing as satisfying as knowing I’ve done my best work, and nothing so exhilarating in seeing people delighted by my best work. There’s also nothing more important than taking a break when I need it, focusing on my family, and taking care of myself. I do my best work when life is balanced.

I believe that elegance can be found in everything. Give me complicated, give me nuanced, and I’ll try my hardest to find clarity, order, and simplicity. A mess of content, unformatted and disorganized, becomes an easy to read and navigate web page. A site structure that confounds even the most familiar with it’s idiosyncrasies gets blown up, reorganized, and turned into a logical series of user pathways to get people to their destination in the most intuitive way possible. A collective of voices discussing their hopes, dreams, fears, and pains gets distilled into a strategic vision for how to get to where they all want to be.

I believe in being nice. People fail, projects fail, people disagree and misunderstand one another. That’s reality. I choose to look for the upside even when things are at their worst, and praise and encourage and model belief that things can be better and that yes, we really can do this. When things are good, I let people know how much I appreciate that they are good. I try to find common points of understanding and work to build from those. I thank people for their input and feedback, even when I don’t agree with it. I’m polite even when others aren’t.

I believe everything is connected. Your brand isn’t your logo, brochure, tagline or motto. It isn’t your strategic plan. It includes all of those things, yes, but ultimately brand is about how people feel about you, and that is driven by the collective experiences they have with you and the stories they tell others about you.  Maybe that’s a person on the other end of the phone that did what you wanted and then did something you didn’t ask for, but that made your life just a little easier. Maybe it’s a particularly easy experience online. Maybe it’s a timely and targeted email.