about madi
Madi's career started at Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland, where she studied food and wine before pivoting to communications. That foundation still shapes her work: she speaks the language of restaurants, wineries, and hospitality brands because she began her career in their world.
After earning her bachelor's in communications from Lewis-Clark State College, she moved to Chicago for a master's in PR and Advertising from DePaul University. There, she worked at a global PR agency on brands including Blue Diamond Almonds, Almond Breeze, and Luxardo, securing national media coverage and building influencer partnerships. She went on to manage community for multiple tech startups before launching her freelance practice.
Today, Madi freelances full-time as an embedded partner with local creative agencies in Portland and Boise. Her focus spans restaurants, wineries, consumer goods, and hospitality, with services across social media management, media relations, strategy, influencer management, and building ambassador programs.
Madi also teaches Public Relations and Communications courses at Boise State University and Lewis-Clark State College and is a Certified Holistic Health Coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
She lives in Northwest Portland with her two mini aussies, where most weekends involve trips to the farmers market, a fermentation project, or planning a trip.
SERVICES
SOCIAL MEDIA Management
Madi builds a social presence that reflects the values and personality of the business it's representing. Every partnership kicks off with mood boards and a strategy, then moves into the ongoing work–building social calendars, tapping into trends that make sense for the brand, testing new formats, posting consistently, and engaging with social community. Social media is the first impression, especially for local businesses. Madi makes sure it’s a good one.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Madi strategizes opportunities for brands to get in front of the right eyes. That means hands-on media relations support: pitching stories, building targeted media lists, coordinating interviews, and developing press materials. It also means influencer coordination, ambassador programs building, and coverage reporting.
Coaching & Consulting
For the business owner posting at 11pm wondering if any of it matters: this one's especially for you! Madi offers one-on-one coaching and strategy sessions for owners and teams running their own channels. Together you'll audit what you're doing, cut what isn't working, double down on what is, and build a routine you can actually keep up with.
CLIENT WORK
Sunday Sauce · with Play Nice Public Relations
Madi partnered with the Play Nice PR team to support the opening of Sunday Sauce, a Portland restaurant. She owned the social media strategy from the ground up: developing the brand's tone and voice, building the content calendar, coordinating photoshoots, assisting the photographer/videographer during shoots, and tapping into trends that fit the brand. The goal was to build excitement before the doors opened, and keep pushing feet through them after.
Within the first six months, the account grew to 14K+ followers. A trend-driven reel hit 20K views and nearly 500 sends, and the lunch menu announcement reached 12K accounts with over 480 shares — proof the content was being watched AND passed along.
MASU · with Play Nice Public Relations
Where Sunday Sauce was about launching something new, Masu was about breathing new life into an established Portland restaurant. Working with the Play Nice team, Madi built a social strategy around what makes Masu different: a family-owned restaurant where Chef Tommy Shin's Japanese technique meets the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. She owns the social calendar and strategy, builds shot lists with the team's photographer, and taps into trends where they make sense, taking the chore of posting off the owners' plates entirely.
The story-first approach worked. A reel showcasing technique reached 802K views with 3.1K sends and 266 reposts, and a collab posts with a nearby local business reached 16K+ views.
Tumbleweed bicycle co. · with Fisk Brand & Copy
Madi works alongside the Fisk Brand & Copy team on social for Tumbleweed Bicycles, a locally owned brand out of Boise, Idaho building bikepacking and mountain touring bikes made to go farther. Tumbleweed is a well-loved brand with a devoted following, and the goal on Instagram is simple: tell that story and do it well. Madi's role covers ideating posts, identifying trends worth tapping into, shooting and editing reel content, and drafting captions in the brand's journalistic, adventure-first voice.
The strategy revealed a clear winner: bike walkthrough reels. Features on the owners' and employees' personal builds consistently outperform everything else, with a recent employee bike walkthrough earning 4K likes, 300+ sends, and 22 reposts. When the people behind the brand show their own bikes, the audience shows up.
Mentele Health
Madi supported the launch of Mentele Health, a virtual mental health platform founded by Idaho therapists to make therapy more affordable for clients and more sustainable for providers. The engagement covered the full launch package: developing the brand's voice, tone, and guidelines, launching its social channels from scratch, and leading PR for the debut.
The PR push landed Mentele's first earned media hit out of the gate: a feature in BoiseDev, Idaho's leading business and tech outlet with 1.1M unique monthly visitors, titled "Idaho therapists launch new virtual mental health platform." BoiseDev amplified the story across its Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels, reaching a combined audience of 50K+ followers and giving a brand-new company immediate regional credibility.
Previous & Additional Clients
With Play Nice PR
With Access Brand Communications
With YL Communiations
“Madi excels at both the creative and the tactical. She can crunch the numbers and create content and social strategy at scale. She’s always open to feedback and pitches insight and opinions when given the opportunity. She’d be a great addition to any small team. Outsideof the day-to-day work, Madi is empathetic and intuitive and brings real humanity to a team.”
Testimonials
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