My Work

There are five distinct areas of my career that I would like to highlight and how they’ve helped shape me into who I am today.

Studying Classical Latin and Ancient Greek as an undergraduate taught me the fundamentals of academic disciple and creative inquiry.
Being a journalist during the transition from print to online first media trained me to tell a story through emerging media and channels
Creating digital marketing materials at a time when brand storytelling helps define their relationship with consumers.
Challenging and expanding my skills in a strategic communication graduate program.
Giving back to my community through volunteering my time and talents rot organizations and causes I care for.

Here’s a closer look at my academic and professional journey:

Classics

Learning from tradition

When I entered college, I didn’t know what I wanted “to be” when I “grew up.” So, I studied Classical Latin and Ancient Greek. “I wouldn’t get a job, but at least I would know why” (Poltz, 2023). It turned out to be more than a stopgap to declaring a major, but formed how I critically think and approach problems. And, I found a career.

In class, we didn’t just read and translate ancient texts, but gained perspective into the thought process of people who lived thousands of years before us.

Skills I learned formed disciplines that have made me who I am today: relentless research, critical and thoughtful questioning of everything, and putting in the work to draw informed conclusions. I learned how to put in the time to do work well, continuously question any assumptions we have, and be confident in the results.

Journalism

Finding new stories

From 2010 to 2015, I worked as a journalist for MLive Media Group, covering a wide range of beats including breaking news, politics and community and culture.

I was intrigued to write the first draft of history — taking the skills I learned studying the Classics and applying them to tell new stories through emerging media.

When I was hired out of college, the newspaper industry was transitioning from a print-focused to digital first model. I was brought on as one of the first multimedia journalists in our statewide media group: I would arrive at the scene, write the story, take pictures and video, all while providing live updates to the website and social media.

All of this is common now, but at the time, it was new for newsrooms across the country. Every day, we innovated new ways to reach readers on whatever platform they were on through media that would capture their attention.

GOP Primary: Fred Upton versus Jack Hoogendyk

The elusive Michigan flag: One reporter’s quest to hunt down and buy the state’s flag.

Digital Marketing, Communications & Content Creation

Driving results through creativity

Since 2015, I have worked in digital marketing and communications for Bell’s Brewery. The decision to leave journalism didn’t come lightly, but Bell’s is a company from my hometown that I’ve long respected. It was the perfect opportunity to expand my creativity and tell stories in different ways.

When I started, all of our digital marketing was through organic social media. As our social platforms became more saturated and and our industry more competitive, the ways we communicated with customers would fundamentally change.

As we adapted our strategy to focus on paid media, I created authentic content that fit our brand’s voice on established and emerging media, including SEO, SEM, paid and organic social media, native web, blog posts, streaming TV and sponsored content. I created content for several large campaigns, for one driving 153 million impressions, 1 million clicks with <20% engagement rates — and created daily content for our various channels, including netting 1+ million views over more than 30 Instagram Reels in less than 7 months. And most importantly, had fun doing it.

Additionally, I’ve worked on internal communications, including producing content for several company meetings, live streams, and newsletters to help capture and tell our story to the people who make the brewery what it is. It’s been rewarding to grow alongside a brand and adapt our story to different platforms and media.

Graduate School

Making communication strategic

In 2021, I began a Masters in Strategic Communication program at Michigan State University, where I’ve sharpened my skills and challenged my experiences through rigorous classes on evaluation techniques, communication ethics, audience analytics, persuasion and evaluation techniques and strategic message development.

Class projects have focused on specific areas of my work, including how we persuade consumers to purchase our products and the visual ethics of food and beverage marketing.

Within the first week, I was applying lessons and concepts from my classes to my day job. Some highlights of the program work include:

During this class, I explored and grappled with ethical related to digital marketing, including what I do every day: taking pictures of food and beverages. I wrote a research paper looking at the issues that arise and how they influence the way I create images.
In this course, we dove deep into how to develop marketing messages that are authentic, meaningful and will drive consumers to action. Through the readings and exercises, I reassessed how I was crafting messaging for different platforms and developed a new strategy on how we can continue to bring customers along the consumer journey. This course helped put in perspective from what I’ve learned over the past decade working in digital communication.
Having recently became a manager of people before this program, the Catalyst Thinking in the C-Suite was one of the most valuable parts of the program because it allowed me to fully consider what it means to be a leader and how it fits in to my goals and mission in lives. Through a series of journals, mentoring, and exercises, I began to understand why focusing on leadership is important and how to show up better every day at work and in my personal life.

The program has reignited my love of learning in a business and marketing context, and has made me think differently about how I approach thr work I do every day.

Selected works

Community Involvement

Using my time and talent for the community

While working as a creative communications professional, I have also volunteered my time to causes and organizations in the community that I care about. This has allowed me to give back and exercise my talents in different contexts.

Serving on several nonprofit boards, I’ve gained leadership and organizational communication experience that has allowed me to think differently about how to approach projects and reach different audiences.
I’ve worked on several local political campaigns, creating communication strategies that included targeted social media ads, public relations outreach and traditional print communications, working within defined budgets.
In 2020, I was a cofounder of NowKalamazoo, a local news publication established to share information with the community about the COVID-19 pandemic. I created its first website and daily e-mail newsletter.

Awards

2014 Wade H. McCree Jr. Award for the Advancement of Justice from the State Bar of Michigan for a series analyzing the decline in the number of police officers and how it effects crime.
2020 Community Photographer of the Year: Humans of Kalamazoo: for coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement.

Presentations

“Smartphone Content Creation,” Voices for Youth, 2022
“Telling Stories through Digital Marketing” Digital Marketing at WMU, 2021
“You have everything you need: Taking better photos and videos with just your mobile phone” Kalamazoo Social Media Week, 2019
“5 questions you get when studying the Classics” Western Michigan University, College of Arts and Sciences, 2016
“Inspired Customer Service,” Kalamazoo Social Media Week, 2016.
Work Cited
Poltz, S. (2023, April). _Keller Williams and Steve Poltz "Shut The Folk Up And Listen"_. _Park Theatre _. Holland, Michigan ; Park Theatre.