The Whole Bio

(Written in the third person)

Jena Starkes was raised in California and the UK, went to university in France and has been living and working in NYC since then. For the last 20 years she has helmed the small but mighty digital design and marketing agency she founded in 2002. As a creative director, designer, content creator, and branding expert, she possesses a wide range of skills and talents, which she brings to bear in her work with clients large and small.

She started her professional creative journey as a filmmaker - her narrative and documentary work winning festivals from Southern California to South Africa. She then pivoted to digital design and media production and has been creating for the internet ever since. She got her first still camera at the age of 3 and is fiercely dedicated to the making of images, and along with her online creations, she has continued to produce, shoot, direct, and edit both stills and video. She and her perfect pitch have recently begun to explore audio/podcast production.

She has held varied positions in media and technology, academia, and the corporate world, with stints in publishing, advertising, PR, marketing and events coordination. Her wide range of experience has made her a sought-after consultant - advising startup clients on the tools, workflows, and human capital required to create streamlined and friction-less processes. A passionate solver of problems, she finds innovative ways for established brands to overcome entrenched issues, refocusing their messaging and maximizing efficiency.

She has occasionally moonlighted as a teacher at the high school and college levels, creating courses on film theory/production and digital media literacy in and around NYC.

She is an established cool-hunter and trend forecaster, consuming a wide array of content from across the spectrum of society (in the US and abroad) - a huge advantage when it comes to crafting targeted brand communications. She knows what to say, who to say it to, and exactly how to say it.

She is a world class wordsmith, editor and ghost writer, skilled in working with everything from manuscripts to SEO-friendly ad and social media copy. She’s passionate about digital literacy education, and believes firmly that everybody should know why things work the way they do, and that there’s no such thing as “too much information”.