Julia Smiljanic

My passion for storytelling began in high school where I did editorial and design for our yearbook for 3 years in a row, and I really found a love for storytelling through that. That's been the key guide throughout my marketing career - I use storytelling and data to anchor the strategy that I create for the agencies I serve. I've worked across all types of organizations - for-profit, non-profit, government, small business, big business - but always in marketing. Today, I'm a full-suite marketer who handles everything from shooting raw photos to designing and implementing strategy that guides campaigns. I do all of our photography for our agency, from headshots to capturing those mission moments around our work, along with graphic design and a lot of copywriting and email design and editing. But strategy has really been the cornerstone of my work. I've been overseeing the communication strategy at the food bank for about 4 years, and when I started, we had a $2 million annual operating budget, and now we're at about $4.5 million. We're just about to complete our capital campaign, which was a $17 million project, and leading strategies throughout all of that and creating the assets that bring everyone deeper into the story has really been where my work sits. I look at what I do as getting to shine the spotlight on everything that's already happening and just bring it to the forefront - the work is already there, I just get to bring those things to the forefront so everyone else can see and find a space for them all to be a part of it.