Suzy Martin

I studied Visual Communication & Strategy at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where I received the Emerging Leader Scholarship—an award focused on developing people who enter organizations and move them forward. That has more or less been the shape of my career since.

In Washington, DC, I spent years in scholarly publishing at the American Psychological Association, then the American Chemical Society. I ran campaigns, email programs, content operations, and events for national membership organizations — large audiences, mature systems, defined teams. I learned how marketing works when the infrastructure is already built and the question is how well you use it.

I came back to Minnesota deliberately. Plymouth Congregational Church is an iconic institution sitting at the intersection of neighborhoods I grew up in, went to school in, and worked in, with significant community programs and almost no one outside the building aware of them. They didn't need more content. They needed strategy, and they needed the systems to deliver it.

As the entire marketing and communications function, I handled strategy, brand, design, web, email, and platform administration. The central project was selecting and implementing Realm as the organization's engagement platform—something they had wanted for years but hadn't been able to execute. I ran it from evaluation through migration, governance, and staff training, and absorbed a mid-project scope increase of roughly 22% without moving the delivery date. This site is the same work at a smaller scale: designed, written, and built by me.

What connects all of it: I translate rules other people define into working systems in the hands of non-specialists — and I build them to keep working without me.

Currently based in Minneapolis, working remotely.