THE PERSON BEHIND THE WORK
My story
Home is Portland, Maine. Two decades working within the outdoor, startup, small business, and nonprofit communities here has shaped how I think about brands. Most of the work now is brand and content strategy for Maine's outdoor brands, independent retailers, and mission-driven organizations.
Twenty years ago, you could find me driving around New England with a car full of product samples, knocking on the doors of outdoor shops one at a time. My bags held gear from brands like Buff, Lolë, Deuter, Sierra Designs, and Bergans of Norway.
That work meant living in the field, watching how brands show up in the real world, on shelves and in conversations rather than on screens. It also made me the direct line between those brands and the small shops that staked their reputations on what they chose to sell.
When social media showed up, many of those brands and small businesses were unsure they even needed it. The community building and visibility waiting there seemed obvious to me, so I helped brands like Buff and Bergans of Norway launch their US social presences early.
By 2010, digital was clearly changing how brands connect with people, and that was a space worth building in. I spent the next fourteen years running a digital marketing practice out of Portland, Maine, helping businesses earn credibility and grow communities online. Most recently, I worked in-house, running marketing for a statewide nonprofit whose biggest school program reaches more than 15,000 Maine kids annually.
✳︎WHERE THINGS STAND
That brings us to today.
I'm focused on what the moment calls for: building real, credible brands in the age of AI. The work I want to do now is help Maine's outdoor and mission-driven brands sound unmistakably like themselves while everything around them flattens out.
✳︎PURPOSE AND PROMISE
For Maine's small teams doing big work
Purpose
Kristel & Co. exists to close a gap in Maine's outdoor economy: independent businesses rarely get access to senior marketing expertise unless they can afford to hire it full time.
Promise
Work with Kristel & Co. and the strategy starts with your actual voice and audience rather than a template. What gets built sounds like you, holds up past a single campaign, and never leans on the smoothed-over, interchangeable language that makes so many brands sound alike right now.
WHAT I HOLD TO
How I work
Specificity over sameness. Your foundation gets built from your own words, your real history, and the things only you can claim, which is what keeps the finished work from sounding like everyone else's.
Lived experience. Twenty years selling gear, launching brand social presences, running an independent practice, and leading marketing in-house means the strategy comes from having done the job.
Rooted in Maine. The work is shaped by how business actually gets done here, by the retailers, the gear brands, the nonprofits, and the land trusts that make up this community.
Plain, honest language. You get straight answers about what will work, what won't, and why, including when that isn't what you were hoping to hear.
Built to outlast a campaign. The goal is a foundation specific enough, and systems durable enough, that your voice holds together long after the first project wraps.
What that looks like in practice
- ✳︎I hit deadlines, because I know what a missed handoff does to a small team's week.
- ✳︎Everything I hand off comes documented, with a plan for running it at whatever budget and staffing you have left, so your team can keep it going without me.
- ✳︎Every project is scoped and billed upfront, so there are no surprises partway through.
- ✳︎Every project starts with a clear strategy and ends with an outcome you can measure.
The work arrives finished and polished, ready to put to use. Production work, like templates, forms, and finished copy, is part of the foundational scope, so you're not left needing extra design support to make it usable.
I want Maine's independent brands to be known as much for how clearly they tell their own stories as for the work they do.
Twenty years in, I still sweat the details. If your brand has a story worth telling, let's talk.
Let's talk about your brand.
Tell me where things stand.