Storyteller. Communicator.

Connector of people and ideas.


Marketing, brand and communication strategy

jkcurtis@gmail.com | 503-840-5569

LinkedIn Profile

About This Portfolio

As a marketing and communication strategist, I love the adventure of building brand love, crafting impactful messages, showcasing the team's thought leadership, and driving demand by celebrating successes. Drawing from publicly available materials, this portfolio provides a sampling of my work, which spans multiple edtech startups as well as established market leaders.

Art from an advertisement for Lumen Learning featuring the Berlin Wall and a headline that says, "Tear Down This Wall". The subhead says, "Textbook costs are a barrier to student success that we can remove together."

Brand Campaign:

Lumen Learning

Objective: Introduce Lumen as a revolutionary, "David vs. Goliath" entrant into the college textbook market as a low-cost digital courseware provider.

My work: Ad concept & copy. Design executed with freelance designer.

Results: Iconic, values-based ad helped Lumen establish its brand story, move into the consciousness of target audiences, and generate investor interest.

Art from an advertisement for Lumen Learning with the headline, "When students can't afford textbooks, everybody pays." The subhead says, "Student success is too high a price to pay for expensive textbooks."

Brand Campaign:

Lumen Learning

Objective: Create urgency around lowering textbook costs and put forward Lumen courseware as a solution.

My work: Ad concept & copy. Design executed with freelance designer.

Results: Ad effectively drew the connection between textbook cost and student success. It further established Lumen's brand story and increased awareness of target audiences, particularly college administrators and faculty.

Screengrab of Lumen Learning's OER Champion Playbook

Content Marketing & Community Engagement

Objective: This digital playbook and accompanying workbook were created to demonstrate thought leadership and engage academic leaders working to advance the use of open educational resources (OER) in college classrooms.

The playbook shares community examples for how to generate interest, gain traction, and support faculty using open content. The workbook guides users through a planning process to promote the use of OER.

My work: Concept, content, website design, and community engagement to collect "plays." Graphics provided by in-house designer.

Results: Successful integrated marketing campaign led to measurable increases in SEO ranking, social media engagement, website visits and lead generation. Playbook content also secured multiple conference presentation and workshop invitations which generated leads and sales.

Product Marketing:

Waymaker Courseware

Objective: Introduce and differentiate a new flagship digital courseware product. Reinforce thought leadership of company co-founder. Produce professional quality but relatively low-cost video content.

My work: Concept, script, editing to final cut in collaboration with video producer.

Results: Video featured in campaigns and marketing activities that drove 99% YoY revenue growth the year it was published.

Screengrab of Lumen Learning's course catalog

Product Marketing:

Lumen Course Catalog

Objective: Showcase digital courseware products in visually beautiful, easy-to-browse format. Increase lead generation, new and add-on product adoption. Ensure compatibility with WordPress-powered company website.

My work: Concept, content and structure for user-friendly courseware product catalog. Developed in collaboration with in-house designer and freelance web design team. Subsequent UX refinements driven by user testing.

Results: New catalog fueled increased lead generation and featured in campaigns and marketing activities that drove 60% YoY revenue growth the year it was introduced.

Creating Ellucian

Corporate Naming & Branding

Objective: Post-merger, rename and rebrand former competitors as a unified market leader providing enterprise software and professional services for the global education vertical market.

My work: Lead the project to assess brand equity of the merged companies, define a new unified brand identity, and rename the global company.

Results: Ellucian's successful renaming/rebranding project was executed in a timely manner. It succeeded in transferring loyal customers, market leader mindshare and positive brand equity to the new company.

Writing Samples - Multiple Formats

Aerial view of Salt Lake Community College campus

Customer Testimonial

Link to content

Logos for SUNY, the State University of New York, and OER Services, a department within SUNY

Partnership Press Release

Link to content

Open Learning Initiative logo from Carnegie Mellon University, Transforming higher education through the science of learning

Partnership Press Release

Link to content

Odessa College logo

Customer Testimonial

Link to content

Planning Workbook

Link to content

Lumen Circles logo

New Product Announcement

Link to content