About me
I love the pursuit and discovery of the profound.
I’m a highly adaptable marketer and entrepreneur seeking profound states of being. I’ve worked in TV journalism, film, technology, beverages, overseas ventures and startups. My interests include consciousness, altered states, robotics and music.
I’m presently the part-time marketing director for Nirvanic Consciousness Technologies, a Vancouver startup undertaking novel-in-the-world science into the physics of consciousness, using quantum computers and robotics.
Together with my partner, I also run, Make It Profound, a founder agency that provides business coaching and creative services to profound enterprises.
Designing brands
It’s an alchemy of intuition, strategy, and creative iteration.
And it’s deeply personal.
I designed the Nirvanic company’s brand elements, including its logo, fonts, colours and name, which is an adjective for nirvana or profound enlightenment.
Nirvanic is a deeptech startup tackling a profound scientific mystery: what creates conscious experience? Its vision is to create technologies that help expand human consciousness, and enable conscious AI.
The logo became a “floral reveal” of a sacred geometry — a suggestion that consciousness emerges from an underlying physics. The pink on black is a bold punch — highlighting the founder’s distinctiveness as a woman exec in an AI industry dominated by tech bro’s.
Nirvanic’s brand has grown quickly globally, especially with our Substack. I ghostwrite the newsletters that describe our founder’s journey exploring the frontiers of physics to develop consciousness technologies.
Marketing know-how
The consultancy, Make It Profound, brings together my years of marketing experience to help inspired enterprises stand out.
I take the lead on its creative services, including the design of brands, websites and marketing films for clients.
My marketing portfolio is diverse with projects across many industries promoting wine and spirits, technology, cultural institutions, education and a world-class violinist.
At Sanctuary AI, a globally influential humanoid robotics company in Vancouver, I crafted commercial pitch films for contract opportunities worth millions. A short product launch video I made for the company won a major US marketing award (with the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals).
For 20 years, I have also supported the marketing and communications of virtuosso violinist, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, with a documentary shot in Shanghai, marketing films, UK publicity campaigns and a website. We’re about to publish a cinematic film series about her performance of Paganini - the most difficult violin music ever written.
And early in my career, I drove innovation at Coca-Cola as a national business analyst in Toronto. I analysed sales data for 30,000 stores in Ontario to identify opportunities for new products. I pioneered a sales information system for a handheld tablet computer that sales agents used to sell more Coca-Cola beverages. The system was lauded by the President as a North American Best Practice.
Journalism + Filmmaking
From TV news, to movies, to marketing, I’ve produced more than a thousand video projects.
Okay — so why so many?
My foundational experience was with CBC News where I was a TV video journalist, shooting, writing and editing daily TV stories across Canada.
After a decade of it, I moved to the West Coast where I worked periodically with the Globe and Mail , CTV Vancouver and The Tyee, writing and shooting video stories on everything from pipelines to politicians.
I then shifted into the BC film industry, working on movies as a Lamp Operator and Digital Imaging Technician. I also edited quite a few film trailers, and helped friends with their independent film projects.
Business development
A quirky and exhilarating experience was helping my best friend develop a new coconut-nectar alcohol product company in the Philippines. It gave me a taste for early stage ventures.
Lambanog is the country’s national drink. It tastes like vodka but with a sweet floral taste. Our aim was to create both a profitable product company and a great employer for rural Filipino families.
For months, I developed a comprehensive retail market analysis for working out how our product’s brand and pricing would fit in a diverse alcohol landscape of local and foreign competitors. Significantly, I established how to distribute the product through a national network of 1,300 7-Eleven stores.
The Philippines is like a second home to me. I worked there as a young man, and in recent times, caught up with my old boss, a Canadian museum consultant who lives there, who gave me the opportunity to make a marketing film about the country’s new national museum. Using drone videography, I captured the revitalisation of this magnificent building topped by a dazzling $500-million “Tree of Life” dome roof.
