Dear Team Alloy,
Below are a few writing samples that illustrate a range of work experience spanning print, digital, social and corporate communications from my years in-house and on the agency side.
Thank you for visiting.
WEBSITE COPY // RIVIAN
I was the first staff writer hired by Rivian while the electric vehicle company was still a startup operating in stealth mode. Before I joined, the CEO and his small team of engineers would take turns fulfilling copy needs and while they’d become skillful at talking to investors, they hadn’t yet begun a dialogue with their future customers. Everything around me was being built from scratch in real time but I knew the voice was not something that could be manufactured.
I had to listen for it. It was a wild and humbling adventure to help discern the heart and soul of Rivian. The process to codify it into style guides which became websites, social posts and newsletters and, in the end, relationships with our customers was iterative and deeply collaborative. We weren’t just introducing Rivian, we were introducing a new way of moving through the world. We had to show people that electric was not only the right choice for the planet, it was the safer and more exciting choice for humans, too. Eventually, my role expanded beyond copywriting into creative strategy but some of my early work can still be found here and there throughout the site.
CULTURE GUIDE // RIVIAN
In my tenure at Rivian, the company scaled from a scrappy startup with a couple hundred people to a global, publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees joining from nearly every industry. I worked closely with the CEO and Chief of People to distill the values and behaviors that helped us scale without losing our soul. This manifested into a document we called Compass.
BLOG // RIVIAN
Rivian started a blog to share the journey of bringing electric adventure vehicles to life. As the only in-house writer at the time, it meant that in between writing the style guide and website and social posts and customer emails and collateral pieces, I got to do things like accompany our engineers on a trip to Puerto Rico to figure out how to give our batteries a second life in parts of the world most vulnerable to climate disasters.
CEO BIO // RIVIAN
While at Rivian, once we built out the brand and marketing team, a role was created for me within the Office of the CEO. As a confidant, creative partner and sometimes ghostwriter for the founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, I collaborated with him on everything from his six-page memo to Jeff Bezos to the S1, managing his social media presence and even helping to flesh out the vision for his family foundation. Surprisingly, one of the hardest things I had to do was try to sum him up in a few words for the company website.
CEO SOCIAL // RIVIAN
What if Thomas Edison had had an Instagram account? Imagine if we had a time capsule of his days. At Rivian, one of my responsibilities was to develop the social presence of the founder and CEO—a guy who started a car company from scratch, straight out of MIT at age 26. He and I partnered closely to develop a hyper-personalized strategy with the intention of giving the next generation a behind-the-scenes peek at what following your wildest dreams can look like. I handled the majority of the filming, editing and posting.
PRODUCT COPY // SHINOLA
During my time at Shinola, my post was in the marketing department but you'd rarely find me at my desk. I spent most of my days on the manufacturing floor—the heartbeat of Shinola—to ensure the spirit of the watchmakers, assemblers and artisans was always informing the copy.
BLOG // SHINOLA
The quartz analog movement that makes Shinola's flagship timepiece tick is made up of 40 delicate components. It's called the Argonite 1069, and it's the caliber—or tiny engine—that taught Shinola how to be Shinola. To write this blog post, I spent countless hours inside Detroit's first watch factory, watching, listening and learning. This is a story about building more than watches.
PRINT // EARLY CAREER
Earliest work from my days on the agency side. For posterity.