Chief Creative/Keynote Speaker/POET
Helen has led teams and created award-winning work for some of the world's best known brands: Microsoft, BMW, CIGNA, McDonald's, SunAmerica, DirecTV, Primrose Schools, Lexus, Red Bull, Mitsubishi, Southern California Edison and many others at agencies like Deutsch L.A. & NY, TBWA Chiat/Day, Team One, Saatchi, DDB, Ogilvy, Blitz, INNOCEAN, McGarry Bowen and Wunderman Thompson. She has a passion for helping people and brands break through to their next level of success.
While Helen has spent most of her career in mass market advertising growing brands and creating everything from award-winning tv, radio, digital/social, out-of-home, print, websites and videos, she’s also a sought-after expert in multicultural marketing and has launched multi-platform campaigns to diverse audiences, worldwide. And she’s implemented mentoring programs for women and people of color in advertising.
Some of her finer moments have included moving people to action in support of progressive causes for organizations like MoveOn.org, ACLU, NRDC, VoteVets and Amnesty International. She has served on the national board of Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority which was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work alongside Afghan women. Helen is a recipient of the Human Rights Award (LACAAW) - Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan. She has had the privilege of addressing audiences on behalf of human rights for women and girls and as a keynote speaker for the 3% Conference.
A love of telling very short stories has led to publication in some top U.S. literary journals like Field, Indiana Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Cincinnati Review and River Styx. Ha Jin nominated Helen's book-length poetry collection as a finalist for the AWP Donald Hall prize. And River Styx once threw her name in the ring as one of the best new poets of the year.
Helen also worked closely with Emma Watson on her passion project, managing the world’s largest intersectional feminist book club with over 300,000 members. She is proud to have played a part in elevating the voices of underrepresented authors and may have even helped a few reach the New York Times, Amazon and UK bestseller lists.
Helen loves to continuously learn from people and cultures at home and in her travels. She has fearlessly ordered food in 45 countries, climbed higher than 17,000 feet in Nepal, scaled Mayan pyramids in Guatemala and hiked over glaciers in Patagonia. Helen survived a close encounter with a hippo while shooting commercials in Kruger National Park, dangerously raised her cholesterol levels on a three-week production in Italy and nearly lost her pretzels while shooting from the floor of a van speeding up the Bavarian alps.
Her proudest accomplishment is being a Mom of twins.