Creative Director & Strategist: I pair right-brain creativity with left-brain logic to inspire leaders and organizations to uncover their abiding mission-vision-values and create their brand identity. I’m adept at managing and supervising art directors, videographers, programmers, UX engineers and other creative doers to bring brands to life. I have lots of experience developing short- and long-term strategic plans, project management and executing integrated campaigns across the web, mobile, social media and building large-scale interactive and 3D environmental projects from inception to launch.
Manager &Mentor: I call on my empathy to relate, and my life experiences to understand. When combined, they help me ask honest, open questions and listen for salient, prescient answers. This process and management style catalyzes positive growth within individuals, teams, situations and workplaces and helps foster collaboration within organizations.
Co-Creative Process Leader: I’ve had the honor of partnering with Latinx and Indigenous community members to co-create marketing and interactive communication and educational pieces across the greater Portland region. As a queer man, I love lending my experience to help others from marginalized communities.
Career Highlights: I rebranded a government, and then built world-class educational and interpretive experiences to expand their engagement; I named and branded an LGBTQIA+ healthcare provider; I recently trained staff from The Nature Conservancy of Oregon on how to overcome communication barriers by connecting with people one-one-one and emphasizing their shared humanity.
WORK EXPERIENCES
Freelance Creative Director and Copywriter Portland, Oregon, three years I work directly with clients and collaborate as part of freelance teams to help individuals, organizations and businesses determine the right approaches to take and the best words and visuals to get their point across so they can boost their influence and increase their followers. I focus primarily on helping non-profits do good things in the world. Most recently, I supported The Nature Conservancy as a writer, strategist and trainer. After interviewing employees to understand their communications barriers around telling TNC’s climate action story, I developed the best ways to approach legislators, ranchers, donors, volunteers, partners, and other audiences across the state. This meant translating complex, scientific jargon into everyday language, and tailored their messages by topic and audience. Once the marketing pieces were completed, I trained staff on how to discuss climate change in ways that avoid fraught political conversations and instead promote productive, connective dialogues.
Metro Portland, Oregon, five years Senior Communications Specialist. I co-creative directed the rebranding of Metro, Portland's regional government. I also wrote their first Parks and Nature marketing plan, and launched the new brand via the website; social media; magazine, radio & bus ads; on uniforms, vehicles and giveaways; and as signs on buildings. I helped craft an internal communications plan that aligned 1,200 employees with the new branding effort through elevator speeches and communications training. I initiated, concepted and launched Metro’s first human-resources-based recruitment campaign. I co-led a yearlong communications research project to identify communications barriers for people of color and the best methods and approaches to reach them. I initiated, concepted, and co-creative directed the first-ever video explaining who Metro is. Now, after 40 years, anyone, anywhere can understand Metro’s role in the region. My Metro brand collaborators and I worked with local residents to ensure the new brand reached both the region’s passionate nature and urban-planning lovers, as well as diverse, low-income and non-English-speaking communities. The head of marketing commended me for my "verbal dexterity, infallible eye and world-class people skills". After the brand launched, I worked with over 30 stakeholders across the region to initiate, produce, creative direct and project manage an interactive touchscreen experience at the Oregon Zoo. Then I worked to expand the Park Finder online. Now, yourperfectpark.org helps English and Spanish speakers find places to enjoy nature wherever they visit in the region. I creative directed all the assets for the project, including the user experience, imagery and videos. I launched an Instagram Park of the Month campaign to showcase Metro’s parks and natural areas to new age groups and direct users to the Park Finder for further inspiration. For my capstone Metro project, I creative directed and produced an innovative, intriguing educational experience at Oxbow Welcome Center. From etching a 44-foot riverine pattern of the park’s river leading visitors inside the welcome center, to orchestrating a 6-foot square backlit map of the park that acts as a nightlight, to embedding paw and hoof and footprints into the polished concrete floor which, when followed, lead to laser etchings of the animals they belong to, I helped pique visitors curiosity and taught them the observational skills needed to find local wildlife and navigate natural spaces. I collaborated with local Latinx and Indigenous youth and families to co-create a bilingual self-guided kid’s adventure through the park. Throughout all of this work, I hired and managed freelancers, negotiated agreements with contractors, managed budgets, met timelines, and had a great time building things that will last for decades to come.
Pop Art, Inc. Portland, Oregon, two years Freelance Copywriter hired as Editorial Director. I led writing efforts to re-launch Freightliner Trucks and Detroit Diesel sites. I pitched (and won) largest Agency of Record account in the agency’s history. I wrote and supervised writers on projects across all the agency’s accounts.
Winborn & Company Portland, Oregon, seven years Founding Writer, Strategist and Creative Director. I helped clients establish (or re-brand) the look, feel and voice of their companies by leading them through the branding process, then helped them with marketing planning; building websites; redesigning or creating their marketing from scratch to establish or bolster their online and social media presence. I love researching and writing case studies and rationales. My clients included: Salesforce; Hammer + Hand; Greenline Fine Woodworking; Devil’s Food Catering; Greenz Restaurants; Green Living; Sun Microsystems; IBM; HP; SMU School of Engineering; SBC/AT&T Communications; Hyatt Hotels and Resorts; DIRECTV; Mitsubishi Motors; and Brinker International.
Javelin Direct/Rapp Collins Worldwide Irving, TX, five years Senior Copywriter. I established the voice of AT&T’s online Permission Marketing program.I also concepted and wrote micro-sites, landing pages, banner ads, product emails, direct mail pieces. I completed over 600 projects/year, and managed seven writers and art directors to brainstorm content, conduct online research, design, write and edit SBC interactive newsletter and promotional emails. I used backend analysis to forecast and plan editorial calendar and create new content. My straight talk and solid performance garnered respect from 15 client-side executives. I gained experience in tracking analysis, writing rationales, forecasting. I won two roundtrip tickets on Southwest Airlines for naming the new offshoot agency, Javelin Direct, and one of my DIRECTV ads was referenced in a New York Times article.
Concorde-New Horizons Film Corp. Los Angeles, CA, two years Director of Marketing and Publicity. I produced 30 video and DVD marketing campaigns per year working with film producer/director, Roger Corman,president of the world’s largest independent film company. I also created posters, sell-through sheets, wrote and edited trailers, cut-down films and scripts. I managed 15 freelancers to produce it all on time and under budget.
EDUCATION
Harvard College Cambridge, MA 1995 A.B. in English and American Literature and Language with a focus on Romantic poetry and Walt Whitman. Additional coursework in creative writing, photography studio courses, and French.
Coach’s Training Institute Seattle, WA 2018 I completed 100 hours of coursework, seminars and training on topics such as: uncovering and overcoming creative, personal and career blocks; iterating personal values; and taking action toward living a life more aligned with your heart, mind, body and psyche.
MEDIA KNOWLEDGE
Zoom; Instagram; Facebook; Twitter; Google Workspace; Google Adwords; Microsoft Office Suite: Word, PowerPoint, Excel; Adobe Creative Suite: Basic Photoshop and Illustrator; WordPress and SquareSpace; MailChimp.
HOBBIES
Avid gardener, cook and restaurant hopper; furniture designer & builder; co-founder of the annual Portland Fermentation Festival; workshop and class instructor on topics ranging from urban chicken-keeping to creative ideation, meditation and emotional processing techniques. Side hustle as an intuitive astrologer at IntuitiveGeorge.com.