Hello!
I’m Natalie (she/her), a communications leader, award-winning storyteller, marketing and content strategist, and executive advisor.
I’m an East-Coast-born, West Coast convert. Origin: Canadienne; currently a Seattleite via California. I bring my unique intersection of skills and experience—a foundation in journalism; a career leading marketing and communications strategy, programs, and teams for media and global brands; an MFA and storytelling mastery—to help people and organizations share their most awe-inspiring stories. Authenticity and trust-building are at the center of everything I do.
A newsy gal, a Nellie Bly, a deadline doer …
For a decade I built my writing skills as a reporter at newspapers around the West, learning how to listen, how to distill the message from the noise, and how to craft stories that deeply impact readers. I wrote about migrants traveling through the desert, lesbian golf tournaments, and backyard and boardroom politics at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif.; dodged falling boulders to track a serial killer at a tiny newspaper in Gold Country; wrote film and art reviews for the San Francisco Independent; and covered the legal system, state policy, growth issues, healthcare, transportation, and social issues at The Seattle Times. As a young newspaper journalist, I learned one of the most important lessons of my career: You must build trust with subjects and stakeholders first and foremost, in order to help them feel comfortable telling intimate, authentic stories that create impact. To witness people’s lived experiences and hear their hopes and heartbreaks is the greatest privilege.
Who became a leader, a team builder, a big-dream dreamer
From 2012 to 2017 I directed content and editorial strategy, developed social and marketing campaigns, dreamed up creative, and tripled traffic as the Executive Editor of ParentMap, a media company and trusted regional brand. At this dream job, I married two great passions: creative storytelling, and advocating for the education, health, and social systems that support all families. With every monthly magazine that hit the newsstands, every live event bringing critical research and insights from experts to parents, and every click on our highly trafficked website and social channels, I scaled the brand’s reach and engagement of a new market of millennial parents. I also built my leadership muscle, managing a team of 30+ talented editors, designers, writers, and freelancers. Coaching others to develop their skills and pursue their dreams—especially writers and creatives from nontraditional pathways who have been closed out of avenues and access to publishing—has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career.
Who then crashed the corporate tech party
I made the jump to corporate storytelling to help Microsoft tell its brand story, creating and curating content and serving as lead internal and external storyteller for the tech giant’s employer brand program. As Managing Editor of Microsoft Life I covered topics ranging from AI to quirky employee passions, from cutting-edge campus design to the largest employee giving program in the world and powerful stories of diversity and inclusion. Versatile and always learning, I built communications plans, style guides, social campaigns, and an employee communications newsletter that circulates to 150,000 people weekly.
In 2019, I became a Principal Product Marketing Manager to build a thought leadership program for a data analytics product suite helping organizations and employees measure and change how work happens. Here, I explore the future of work and built the playbook that communicated a new category and product to analysts and customers—investigating how culture must change so work can improve; creating multimedia stories about solving tough problems; and pivoting the GTM roadmap when Covid upending everything to launch a campaign that measured how Microsoft was re-inventing work in real time. In addition to public-facing thought leadership and marketing campaigns, I also contribute my storytelling to leading industry publications such as Harvard Business Review.
Becoming indispensable to a global technology brand and its leaders
In 2020 I took on a critical role where across progressive leadership growth I led the communications function for Microsoft’s Talent, Culture & Inclusion, Learning & Development portfolios, and built and supported the platform of the company’s Chief Diversity Officer. I built and developed a team across communications, operations, PR, and events; architected the company’s external facing diversity & inclusion narrative and positioning; led the development and execution of a world-class annual ESG report for four consecutive years; and designed and led strategy and programming for enterprise-wide events that engaged 220,000 employees across 190 countries. In this high-visibility, high-stakes role I drove I drove key brand outcomes during a period of rapid enterprise and AI transformation, including 130+ positive top tier earned media placements, #1 on Forbes Best Employer 2025, 100 score HRC Corporate Equality Index five years running, and Top 3 Axios Harris Poll 100 in 2025. Internally the programs I led significantly increased participation, strong positive sentiment, and sustained employee engagement driving 96% positive sentiment 4.3/5 employee N-SAT for flagship events and experiences. I elevated the Chief Diversity Officer and CVP of Talent and Learning, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, from a small, fragmented platform over-oriented in HR into an industry-defining authority on workforce transformation, enterprise culture, and AI skilling with 340% reach increase during a period of heightened scrutiny. I served as Chief of Staff and advised CVPs and EVPs across the enterprise, positioning the company’s highest profile leaders to tell the story of the world’s most inclusive culture and products. While building deep corporate and technical acumen and fostering trust in moments of growth and change, I stayed anchored in storytelling expertise, envisioning and leading world-class multimedia storytelling campaigns such as The Code of Us that engage employee communities, position the brand, and show audiences the people behind the innovation.
An MFA in a sea of MBAs
I have a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics. I am an extroverted introvert and an obsessive noticer. I was born for brainstorming: One of my favorite things (besides red velvet cupcakes) is to be in a room with a team of highly engaged, mission-driven people and drive actions for good through creativity. I believe a better world requires more voices at the table, and I take actions to promote and center those voices that often are not heard.
To keep myself under the spell of language, I write creatively on the side and my essays, stories, and opinion pieces have been published in newspapers, magazines and literary journals around the country. My work has explored, among other topics, the threshold of human in an increasingly AI-driven world; my Jewish immigrant identity and the feeling of being an outsider; the roller coaster of parenting and the challenge of raising feminist daughters; and the roots of biophilia in an age of human-technology interdependence. My memoir, California Calling, was released in 2018 by Hawthorne Books. I teach classes and workshops on storytelling, creative writing, and publishing to professionals and adult students, and I speak at conferences and read and perform my creative work regularly around the Pacific Northwest and the country.
Who thrives on creating, collaborating, and serving
I have taught writing in clinical and institutional settings to youth incarcerated inside Seattle’s juvenile detention center and Washington State’s residential youth psychiatric facility, through Pongo Poetry Project. I’ve served as a guest speaker, invited artist, and writer including for On the Boards Seattle, where I responded creatively to contemporary performing art and helped create a bridge of dialogue between artists and the community. I have been the recipient of multiple journalism and creative writing awards and fellowships including winner of the 2013 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Memoir/Nonfiction prize; first runner up for the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award in 2017; finalist in the Autumn House Press book manuscript contest 2016; and second place prize winner in the Torrey House Press Nonfiction contest 2011. I served as 2016/2017 Alumni Ambassador and editor of After the MFA, University of Washington, Bothell MFA Creative Writing and Poetics program and was inducted in 2018 to the University of Washington, Bothell IAS Alumni Hall of Excellence. I’ve taught writing at the University of Washington, Seattle’s Hugo House, and presented my work around the US.