Brienna McWade
(Los Angeles, CA)
A creative since childhood - and doodling since she could hold a pencil - Brienna returned to her creative roots in a professional capacity in 2018 after two decades in technical writing + corporate inventory management. Combining her strategic communications background with her creative design skillset, and divergent thinking, Brienna formulates fresh design + thoughtful brand campaigns.
Her most recent projects include successfully self-launching a retail e-commerce brand and brick+mortar holiday shop during 2020's pandemic. She is currently working with scaling small business clients in the Los Angeles area while also in works to step into a large-scale brand manager and creative director for a multi-state cannabis brand.
Outside of her client projects, Brienna is passionate about gardening, art, parenting, and sleep. She is expanding her illustrative + drawing skillset by taking local Observational Drawing courses and working toward her Master Gardener certification for LA County's UC Extension. She is an avid home gardener + doesn't do late nights. As a single mom of 2 teenagers, she is grateful to be seeing our world through youthful perspectives while instilling the value of business ownership as she is teaching them about working within community, and empowering them to lead creatively by giving back.
She also owns two brands: Advisory Goods, a modern-makers creative art and textiles retail brand; and Acclivity, an "adventure recreation" lifestyle brand being relaunched in 2021.
Brienna is chief creative + owner of The Advisory House and lives in Sierra Madre, CA.
Her most recent projects include successfully self-launching a retail e-commerce brand and brick+mortar holiday shop during 2020's pandemic. She is currently working with scaling small business clients in the Los Angeles area while also in works to step into a large-scale brand manager and creative director for a multi-state cannabis brand.
Outside of her client projects, Brienna is passionate about gardening, art, parenting, and sleep. She is expanding her illustrative + drawing skillset by taking local Observational Drawing courses and working toward her Master Gardener certification for LA County's UC Extension. She is an avid home gardener + doesn't do late nights. As a single mom of 2 teenagers, she is grateful to be seeing our world through youthful perspectives while instilling the value of business ownership as she is teaching them about working within community, and empowering them to lead creatively by giving back.
She also owns two brands: Advisory Goods, a modern-makers creative art and textiles retail brand; and Acclivity, an "adventure recreation" lifestyle brand being relaunched in 2021.
Brienna is chief creative + owner of The Advisory House and lives in Sierra Madre, CA.
Example of Works
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The Back Story
Coming from a corporate-travel background at Holland America Line where she worked for several years performing in Operations departments, Brienna honed skills in document writing, tour inventory management, and contract negotiation primarily in the Alaska, California, Montreal, and Florida cruise markets. While there, she maintained + coordinated inventory of tour space among several transportation avenues before being promoted to hotel inventory negotiations. She continued into Onboard Revenue Management under visibility of the company CFO where she balanced SOP updates with overseeing guest spending across multiple onboard vendors (including fine jewelry, spa, souvenir photos).
Following her transition out of the corporate space, Brienna held a freelance career as a small-town parenting columnist, a Seattle-based band reviewer, and later earned a role in technical writing + communications with EMC Publishing. As a technical writer, her work included proofreading + testing college-level Microsoft Office textbooks before advancing to writing exclusive instructor content and testing materials. All this while holding down the fort as a full-time parent to two. My role of parenting gave me an opportunity to engage in community service and volunteer work in and around her schools and neighborhoods.
Returning to her career in a full-time capacity in 2015 and using retail experience to gain customer-facing feedback + perspectives on the dawn of cannabis legalization in WA State, Brienna was hired as Media Manager for a Tier-3 producer/processor, responsible for the company’s social media feeds + photography content; she organically grew their Instagram following by the thousands within 9 months. Evolving into a Creative Director role in 2016, she collaborated with sales + business development, oversaw packaging + label concepts, helped guide brand advancement, and coordinated media needs.
Leaning on her creative skillsets (from illustration to photography, painting to graphic design), as well as her social media expertise in content creation and management, she now works with companies, large and small, to conceive brand stories + implement marketing efforts across the board - from logo creation to brand communications.
More than a creative, Brienna is a garden hobbiest. She is often tinkering in her vegetable gardens or tending to her succulents. Having naturally green thumb, legalization allowed Brienna to sharpen her grower skills by learning large-scale indoor cultivation and gaining responsibility for cloning and mom-room management at commercial scale. This has given Brie a strong personal understanding of the emerging cannabis industry and the value of the plant product. Working within strict regulatory guidelines, she designs dynamic, compliant brands + marketing content for the adult-use retail environment in several states.
Following her transition out of the corporate space, Brienna held a freelance career as a small-town parenting columnist, a Seattle-based band reviewer, and later earned a role in technical writing + communications with EMC Publishing. As a technical writer, her work included proofreading + testing college-level Microsoft Office textbooks before advancing to writing exclusive instructor content and testing materials. All this while holding down the fort as a full-time parent to two. My role of parenting gave me an opportunity to engage in community service and volunteer work in and around her schools and neighborhoods.
Returning to her career in a full-time capacity in 2015 and using retail experience to gain customer-facing feedback + perspectives on the dawn of cannabis legalization in WA State, Brienna was hired as Media Manager for a Tier-3 producer/processor, responsible for the company’s social media feeds + photography content; she organically grew their Instagram following by the thousands within 9 months. Evolving into a Creative Director role in 2016, she collaborated with sales + business development, oversaw packaging + label concepts, helped guide brand advancement, and coordinated media needs.
Leaning on her creative skillsets (from illustration to photography, painting to graphic design), as well as her social media expertise in content creation and management, she now works with companies, large and small, to conceive brand stories + implement marketing efforts across the board - from logo creation to brand communications.
More than a creative, Brienna is a garden hobbiest. She is often tinkering in her vegetable gardens or tending to her succulents. Having naturally green thumb, legalization allowed Brienna to sharpen her grower skills by learning large-scale indoor cultivation and gaining responsibility for cloning and mom-room management at commercial scale. This has given Brie a strong personal understanding of the emerging cannabis industry and the value of the plant product. Working within strict regulatory guidelines, she designs dynamic, compliant brands + marketing content for the adult-use retail environment in several states.