Culture and brand consulting for independent businesses and creative professionals.
I help to identify your unique value and bring it to life through your work, your business, and your brand.
“Once you have a strong vision that you fully believe in, you can easily convince others. To believe in something, that’s really powerful!”
—Frederico Marchetti
“A strong, creative philosophy, and good organization are essential in order to evolve.“
—Ferran Adrià, El Bulli
“If we don’t believe in the product and we don’t have a genuine enthusiasm, it’s not going to work.”
—Astier de Villatte
“A thirst for money will only lead so far-it’s love that carries you through. It’s important to believe in something. If you don’t, you are not able to go the extra mile. And if you have your own business, you need to go the extra mile all the time.”
—Damir Doma
“Never delegate understanding. “
—Charles Eames
”There is a voice, and there is a DNA to how I design.”
—Kelly Wearstler
“Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling.”
—Peter Zumthor
Services
Through consulting and workshops, we’ll establish what matters most: your unique ‘why, how, and what’. These elements are the foundations for a strong team and culture—enabling your best work and building lasting connections with your clients or customers.
Along with essential tools like cultural research, audience profiles, and journey maps, we’ll integrate the foundations —translating them into everything from client presentations to your marketing strategy.
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Sessions and deliverables assessing the current state of your company/project foundations.
This is the general starting point for any of the following packages.
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Sessions and deliverables articulating the why, how, and what of your business or project.
Foundation packages can include:
Vision, purpose or mission statements
Philosophy, beliefs, or creative voice
Process maps
Audience profiles
Customer/client journey maps
Brand voice and standards development
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Sessions and deliverables focused on the health of your team culture.
Culture can include:
Team interviews, surveys, and workshops
Onboarding assessment and improvements
Workshops to align and immerse the team in key foundational concepts
Reviews and check-ins
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Sessions and deliverables focused on brand and marketing that are grounded in your foundations. This is particularly useful for expanding, improving, or launching new offerings, and is essential for new ventures.
Brand and marketing can include:
Brand Guidelines: putting language and context to your brand identity and voice so the full team can use them
Written assets
Audience Profiles & Journey Maps
Contextual Insights: think competitive landscapes and cultural insights relevant to your marketing activities.
Toolkits: As an addition to the brand guidelines, toolkits are designed specifically for the needs of your team and usually surface as templates, best practices, or standard operating procedures (SOP's).
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Guided sessions and workshops for co-creating and connecting to foundational concepts.
Examples include:
Customer/client journey mapping
Dialogue sessions
New project kick-offs
Department-focused deep dive sessions
$300+
Kind Words
“When you’re a highly creative person, especially with an entrepreneurial streak, it can be hard to see clearly through the ideas. Add managing a team and the day to day of running a business, leaving no time for reflection and proper planning, and you can find yourself always feeling close but never really able to make it through your to-do list for long enough to stop and ask yourself some very important questions.
It’s hard to summarize the work or put into words the clarity and self realization that has come out of working with Christie over these last few months. She has helped us put language to our creative vision, understand our ideal collaborators and audience, and set up systems and goals to help us actually reach our fullest creative expression individually and with our team.
In a sea of bullshit, it’s so refreshing to work with someone who holds creative purity so high and pushes you to seek others who hold it near and dear also, who understands the value in authenticity and the creation of the dream.”
—Katie Logan, Logan Killen Interiors and Design
“Christie was integral in launching Square Roots, and was a key member of our startup team. In her roles of Brand Director and Head of Comms, Christie grounded our company with a clearly defined purpose and played a massive role in formulating our company culture. She worked relentlessly to understand our different audiences, through several early-stage pivots, and sought to create authentic connection with all those cohorts—our customers, our team, and the communities where we've opened farms. We would not be Square Roots today without Christie's work from "day 1".”
—Tobias Peggs, Founder + CEO, Square Roots
“Christie is a remarkably talented and passionate thinker. Her approach to strategy is nuanced—in the best way possible. She invites confident collaboration in her work, helping to foster a respectful and playful environment that enables those she engages with in projects can reach their fullest potential. I can't wait to collaborate with Christie again in the near future. She's truly one of those rare finds in the world of brand strategy.”
—Justin Boone, Founder, Untitled Future
Select Clients
About Me
I love small businesses because they do it for the love.
For decades, I’ve worked with independent business owners and creative professionals—coming of age in family-owned bar/restaurant (RIP Chelsea’s), 15+ years of brand design and strategy, 4 years launching and growing an (at-first) small business in NYC. And for the past few years, through consulting with founders and small teams.
And I still love it. These people give a shit about what they put out into the world. Their passion comes from someplace true and deep inside of them, even if they’re not really aware of it. It’s what drives them, makes them unique, and bonds the team to make great work.
My consulting is designed for smaller and independent businesses, ie: one-off and low-commitment when needed but able to be deeply integrated over time. Honestly, some leaders just need a sounding board with fresh eyes and a knack for listening. Others need prompts to get to the core of their ideas. And many teams just need the time and space to focus on why they’re doing what they do to being with. Not deep dive SWOT reports, but renewed passion and belief.
In consulting, I focus on the essentials and build that into everything the business does. While it’s serious (it’s our work!), at the end of the day, we do it for the love.