Writer by birth,
strategist by trade,
designer by accident.

Kara does brand, content & communications strategy. She does not, however, draw so well.

  • Brand Strategy

  • Integrated Marketing Strategy & Planning

  • Creative Strategy & Creative Direction

  • Growth & Performance Marketing

  • Integrated Campaign Development

  • Channel & Content Strategy

  • Messaging & Positioning

  • Email Marketing Strategy & Production

  • Photo & Video Production

  • Graphic Design & Animation

  • Speech Writing & Bylined Articles

  • Influencer Programming

  • Community Management Strategy

  • PR Activation Strategy

  • Data-driven Performance Optimization

  • Leadership & Mentorship

Skills

Experience

Creative Director

Harmonica Agency - Santa Monica, CA / 2014 – Present

Leading all things verbal and visual for multiple brands, building campaigns with mission and purpose and creating authentic, cohesive communication across channels.  

Responsibilities:

  • Building campaigns that create relevance, urgency and give audiences reasons to believe 

  • Developing news-making activations with partners and influencers

  • Developing communication, content and creative strategy across all digital, social and media marketing channels

  • Crafting messaging & positioning, tone of voice, mission statements, manifestos and brand narratives

  • Managing a remote team of writers, designers, and performance marketers, cultivating their ideas, briefs and final work

  • Presenting all creative and rationale to clients and stakeholders

  • Evaluating the in-market performance of all creative and messaging, making data-informed decisions to optimize campaigns in real time

  • Business development

Senior Writer

Swift - Portland, OR / 2013 - 2014 

Working closely in a team setting with fellow writers, partner designers and agency leadership, creating campaigns for Starbucks, HTC Mobile and Barre3 that launched new products, educated audiences, and grew social and email followings.

Program Manager

Neighbor Agency - Los Angeles, CA / 2009 - 2013 

Crafting and executing public relations and social media campaigns for Jamba Juice, Manduka Yoga, Wanderlust Festivals, Safeway and The Organic Center. It was the early days of digital, thank us for figuring it out.

Other roles, past lives and case studies (audience growth, engagement, influencer & partner programming, media impact, retail/B2B, DTC) available upon request.

Select Past Clients:

  • Friends of the Dalai Lama (official entity of the 14th Dalai Lama)

  • Safeway (O Organics label)

  • Pepsi Co (KeVita)

  • Manduka Yoga

  • Life is Good

  • Starbucks (Evolution Fresh)

  • Caulipower

  • Comvita (USA & Global)

  • Scotts Miracle-Gro (AeroGarden, Lunarly, Knock! Knock!)

  • Adobe Creative Suite (Most proficient in Photoshop, Premier, InDesign)

  • Mailchimp, Klaviyo and other email engines

  • Sprout, Sprinklr, Hootsuite and other social/listening tools

  • JustInMind and other site mapping tools

  • Office & Apple products

  • Cision, Muckrack and other media database tools

  • Dovetail, Influencity and other influencer/affiliate tools

  • Trello, Monday, Asana and other project management tools

Tools