The Proof

Where the years went

1. Corbie Creative

   Founder

   August 2026 – Present · McKinney, TX

   A creative operations practice for teams that need brand and creative to work across a whole organization. Built in public.

   The role

   • Built the brand top to bottom in about nine weeks: name, positioning, a geometric crow mark, a 10-color palette extended into 56 values, a two-family type system, a five-trait voice, and compiled brand guidelines.
   • Wrote, designed, and built the website, including service offers and an intake flow; it is live at corbiecreative.com and still a work in progress. Keep a public, append-only build log with 40+ dated entries on what was decided, what went wrong, and what is still open.
   • Work with Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, and Krea daily and set the rules for where they help: AI drafts, a human reviews everything before it ships, and no client material goes into an image model without explicit agreement.

   Case study

   A company built where you can watch, so the proof is never locked behind an NDA.

   The situation

   Years of work I couldn’t show, a role that had just been eliminated, and no code experience.

   What I did

   • Started with a voice interview that became the blueprint for every page, then built the brand, the site, and the log from it.

   What changed

   A working site, a brand system, and a public record of how both were made.

   • Maybe it won’t be successful, and it still needs to operate as a portfolio.
   • It’s too early to say you need to completely readjust your org around a new technology.

   In my words

   I lived the exact mistake I now help firms avoid.

   How it started is in The Lore.

2. Sixth Street

   Vice President, Head of Creative Services

   June 2021 – October 2026 · Dallas, TX

   Global investment firm managing a now $130B+ across direct lending, growth, infrastructure, real estate, and other platforms.

   Promoted from Senior Associate to Vice President in 2024.

   The role

   In-house

   • Recruited as the founding creative hire and built the in-house creative function, brand governance, and agency model from an empty seat. Grew the team from one to eight and scaled output 14% year over year, reaching more than 2,500 projects a year across presentation, digital, video, UI/UX, and print at a 96.7% completion rate.
   • Built the operating system the team ran on: one intake path, workflow and review steps, and a 36-point quality-check framework that held every deliverable to the same bar.
   • Saw early how AI would reshape creative work and retooled the team for it, piloting AI-enabled workflows and running weekly working sessions. Used AI to map every brand element that needed converting during the website relaunch.
   • Adapted the team from a presentation function to the firm’s new marketing direction and initiatives, including its expansion into Wealth Management. Took on full campaigns: executive thought leadership, video, social, podcasts, newsletters, email, and targeted events, without adding headcount.
   • Led a brand refresh across every touchpoint a couple of years into my tenure, then built the governance behind it: a brand audit across 12+ business units that fed a 47-workstream Tier 1 conversion and positioned the firm for its next brand evolution.
   • Owned creative direction and onsite production, including AV, for the three-day Investor Conference. Each fall’s six-week cycle doubled our normal load: 25 presentations, four of them by the founders and CEO, across 1,471 team hours, with 100% brand alignment across materials.
   • Prepped senior leaders to present to investors: found the one point each wanted the room to remember, cut the slides added out of nerves, and ran the technical side so they could focus on delivery.
   • Directed the dashboards my team built to measure creative effectiveness and used what they showed to sharpen the next campaign and the next investor moment.
   • Managed a $380K annual agency partnership plus the creative vendor and tech stack, including contract and MSA negotiation, and presented the function’s strategy, resourcing, and OKRs to the Executive Operating Committee each year.

   Case study

   Building an in-house presentation design function from the ground up, during a separation.

   The situation

   Presentation design lived with the parent company. As part of the separation, Sixth Street needed a function of its own, built around how the firm actually worked.

   What I did

   • Listened first, then set a clear bar for what good work looked like.
   • Wrote every job description to lead with presentation design and leave room to grow: if you had other specialties, you would be successful.
   • Gave each person on the team a specialty: one on the roadmap and cadence, one on the story guide, one on reusable templates, one on executive buy-in.
   • Pushed for firm-wide brand training: not just templates, but a full understanding of how to use the tools.

   What changed

   An in-house function owned by the firm, with a team built for range: investor conference storylines, sensitive video edits, and the look and feel of an internal app.

   What I’d tell myself now

   • Clarify your autonomy in a build.
   • Firms hire for what they currently use, not for the next stage.
   • Not everything is in your power or control.

   • Every build is always a team activity.
   • Every single person needs to be a steward of the brand.
   • Being able to collaborate across a small group of people for an incredible outcome is so rewarding.

   In my words

   I didn’t actually want to leave Bain. Sixth Street recruited me while I was five months pregnant. I turned it down first, and the recruiter called back and told me she would tell her sister to take this role. My second week on the job was the first week the offices reopened after COVID.

   I was hired to move presentation design over from the parent company as part of the separation, then build Sixth Street’s own in-house function.

3. Bain & Company

   Manager, Creative Services

   June 2014 – June 2021 · Dallas, TX

   Global management consulting firm. Promoted four times in seven years, from Coordinator to Manager.

   The role

   From nine to 34 people on the North American team9→34people, North America

   • Grew the North American creative operations team from nine to 34 and moved five regional inboxes into one global system, so every request ran through the same intake and met the same quality bar.
   • Built hiring, onboarding, and career-development programs that doubled client satisfaction scores. Seven of ten direct reports were promoted in a single review cycle; three later joined me at Sixth Street, where two have since been promoted again.
   • Advised consulting case teams on presentation and story for client work ranging from M&A diligence to corporate reorganizations.

   Case study

   Turning one overflowing inbox into a regional creative function, then a global one.

   The situation

   One inbox, emailed all day. No capacity planning, nothing tracked. The work got done, but only by whoever happened to see it first.

   What I did

   • Owned the inbox and read between the lines of every request, so the real ask got answered.
   • When graphics was regionalized under one head with a Dallas hub, built the workflow and onboarded the team.
   • Ran a daily queue, prioritized by client and billable deliverables.
   • Let people choose whether to go on the journey, instead of forcing someone who thrives in chaos into rigidity.

   What changed

   Nine to 34 on the North American team, and five regional inboxes in one global system.

   What I’d tell myself now

   • Just because it’s my idea doesn’t mean I should be the one executing it.
   • Made all the mistakes a new manager makes in a safe place, instead of it costing me my career.

   • From whack-a-mole to time, organization, and tracking.
   • We didn’t just fire people. We let them choose to go on the journey or not.

   In my words

   I almost didn’t get the job at Bain & Company, because they thought I was too creative for the role. They called me back when the main creative left. I started as graphics coordinator for the South region: Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Mexico City. It was one inbox, emailed all day. No capacity planning, nothing tracked. I grew past design by owning the inbox and reading between the lines of every request.

   Then the graphics function was regionalized under one head, with a Dallas hub. I built the workflow and onboarded the team. We grew from nine to 34 people, then into global collaboration. I ran it on Outlook alone, and IT would shudder when they saw me coming.

4. Kalogridis International

   Designer / Account Representative

   2013 – 2014 · Dallas, TX

   Custom carpet for private planes and yachts.

   The role

   • Walked the production floor several times a day, checking every carpet for the smallest flaw.
   • Built custom order contracts and worked through daily status reviews for every order.

   Case study

   Where I first saw that a process, not a person, was the problem.

   The situation

   Every contract was rebuilt by hand in a cobbled-together Excel file, and that’s where the errors came in. One sharp-eyed approver caught them, so the same fixes went round and round.

   What I did

   • Learned quality control from someone with the eye of a hawk, and learned to read a process for where it breaks.

   What changed

   My first operator lesson: when good people keep fixing the same mistakes, the setup is asking too much of too few of them.

   • They’re putting too much on too few people.

   In my words

   In my mid-twenties, I restarted my life in Dallas. I joined a company that made custom carpet for private planes and yachts. Several times a day, I walked the production floor and crawled across every carpet, looking for the smallest flaw. Every time a new order came in, the designers built the contracts by hand in a cobbled-together Excel file. The approver had been reviewing contracts for years and could spot an extra space from a mile away, sending us back over and over to fix and reprint. Every morning, we met at a round table to go through the status of each order live. I left each day loving the business and the variety of my job, but knowing there had to be a better way to manage the process.

5. FASTSIGNS

   Graphic Designer

   2011 – 2013 · Baton Rouge, LA

   The role

   • Store signage, vinyl stickers, car wraps, and business cards, each on a fixed deadline with its own print setup.

   In my words

   My first job after college was as a graphic designer at FASTSIGNS. Every day I had a giant bulletin board full of projects: store signage, vinyl stickers, car wraps, business cards, and more. Each deadline was fixed, and each type of output needed a different setup. I learned how to be efficient, and how important it is to quality-check my work.