Making worthy ideas visible in the world through narrative strategy & experience design

I’ve been mentoring leaders of all ages with Ben Doepke through Lemon Jetty; co-creating narratives and exploring various scenarios and creative interventions with a nonprofit that provides and protects reproductive health rights, and another that restores aliveness in children and teenagers whose lives have been marked by early violence and trauma. I’ve also enjoyed guest lecturing, designing worldbuilding and experience design workshops, and developing prototypes with the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab.

I had the pleasure of collaborating with one of my intellectual heroes through the New_ Public festival, Krista Tippett, which led me to my next project as the Head of Strategy & Experience for On Being. I helped lead the effort of stewarding On Being into its next chapter by implementing an expanded brand identity system and relaunch plan that brought On Being’s media and public life work into one powerful and legible framework. The work included:

• Creating a new brand architecture based on ethnographic and quant research to reflect the evolution of the Project comprising On Being Studios, On Being Labs and On Being Gatherings; 

• Evolving the On Being narrative and messaging strategy to retain the essence of what has drawn millions of people to it – while also making clearer its value and proposition to new audiences and partners. 

• A connected ecosystem of marketing activities designed to bring the community closer to the Project and building an exciting innovation pipeline to help listeners further internalize the wisdom from 20 years of riveting conversations.

I found myself thinking often about how our media mostly connects a lot of strangers to a personality, or idea, and how poorly it does a job of making it easier for people to connect with each other. And I marveled at the city’s ability, at its best, to be a serendipitous collision machine. I designed an independent study to learn more about the design of cities and public spaces, and ended up creating a little podcast series called The Third Person, where I interviewed people who design for bodies in space across a wide range of disciplines (a dance choreographer, urban geographer, narrative interactive designer, placemaker, etc.). That work led me to Eli Pariser and Talia Stroud, and launching New_ Public, an incubator for reimagining the internet as a digital public space. I co-led all branding and communications efforts, curated and designed our inaugural festival and outreach strategy to help mobilize the space based on research into the various communities we thought could move the space forward.

I consciously searched for collaborators whose practices were more immersive, embodied and participative. As a result, I became a core member of the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab, a group that creates platforms for exploring complex societal issues through reimagining literary works with emergent technologies (e.g. Frankenstein AI, a Monster Made by Many); a frequent collaborator with Technology, Humans and Taste, where I curated “research” dinner conversations and prompts to answer briefs in more interesting ways; and a student of IX’s thick ethnography methods, audience archetype tool and collaborator on various projects.

I had the great fortune of starting the discipline of research & strategy at VaynerMedia, one of the fastest growing digital and emergent technology agencies. There, I learned the importance of rapid iteration and hypothesis testing, and of creating campaigns grounded in communicating with audiences in distinct ways based on each digital platform’s affordances. I also built and nurtured a team of 25 wonderful cultural researchers and strategists and a multidisciplinary prototyping studio.

Sport is the only language my father and I share. Consequently, the rituals of fandom have shaped who I am, and the beginnings of my career. After my masters in sport management, I worked in various segments of the sports & entertainment industry. I cut my teeth in sponsorship marketing and media valuation with clients like FedEx, IBM, vitaminwater and the then Charlotte Bobcats; built a team marketing & business operations function at the NLL based on the NBA's blueprint that gathered intelligence from, and shared insights with all teams; led brand and marketing for Canada's top college basketball program; and eventually transitioned to the sports journalism side for ESPN and SBNation affiliates.