About Me
By day, I'm a creative director at a strategic consulting firm. At various points, I've gotten paid to be a copywriter, graphic designer, video producer, English teacher, event photographer, and poet. My work includes designing newsletters for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; creating the press kit for Adelante, a documentary that aired on PBS affiliates; and writing ads that appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. I graduated summa cum laude from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where I earned a B.A. in English and received departmental honors.
Outside of work, I like to travel, write fairy tales, and take photos. You can see a few of my pictures here. My fiction and poetry have appeared in Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, Timeless Tales, and Tailfins and Sealskins: An Anthology of Water Lore. A short documentary I directed, Bars of Gold: A Portrait of Golden Gai, screened at Design Festa in Tokyo. Originally from Central Pennsylvania, I arrived in Washington, D.C. after stints in San Antonio, TX;: New York City; Baltimore, MD; New Haven, CT; and Philadelphia, PA. I've also lived in Valencia, Spain, and Yokohama, Japan.
Projects
MertonTalks
I am the lead creative for MertonTalks, a subscription service of talks by Thomas Merton, the bestselling author of The Seven Storey Mountain. After listening to thousands of hours of archival recordings, I curated the talks and wrote introduction scripts that I recorded with his biographer, Dr. Michael W. Higgins.
I designed the prototype and wrote the content for the MertonTalks website, produced video promos, worked on social media campaigns (organic and paid), and engaged influencers to help promote the service. From August 2019 through November 2019, the Facebook page received 600K impressions, more than 4K new organic followers (a 300% increase), and a 6.1% engagement rate (50 times higher than the industry standard).
"This is such a fantastic service. You get to hear from the man himself. Four great talks each month for only $8 is a steal." – Timothy McCormick, MertonTalks listener
Citizenship in a Networked Age
Citizenship in a Networked Age is a new project based out of the University of Oxford. I created the opening animation for the initiative's award-winning film (dir. Richard Sergay), led press outreach, and designed and copyedited the print materials for its global launch events.
Download the Citizenship brochure here.
Read my press release here.
Learn25 Cover Redesign
Learn25, an audiobook publisher, sought to rebrand and redesign its catalog in order to bring its 400+ products to new target audiences through Amazon, Audible, Hoopla, and other online distributors. After my redesign of Brilliant by Barry Schwartz drove a large increase in sales, I designed new covers for books by bestselling authors such as Henri Nouwen and Jay Parini, then guided the junior designers who worked on subsequent covers.
Wisdom from World Religions
Wisdom from World Religions is a massive online open course run by Dr. Kenneth Rose at Graduate Theological Union. I created the promo videos, designed the mockup for the landing page, wrote the copy for the website and ad campaigns, and managed the Facebook page.
“We have created a successful online course, one that can be repeated multiple times. The course website just keeps getting better thanks to Kristen VanBlargan [and her team]. The dynamic advertising campaign developed brought us many students—with many more to come.” – Ken Rose