Corporate history
Documenting corporate history is its own kind of storytelling, less about a single narrative and more about surfacing the throughlines hidden across decades of people, decisions, and change. The work starts with deep interviews and oral histories, often pulling from leaders, longtime workers, and archived materials that don’t always agree with each other.
From there, it’s about finding the patterns: the moments that shaped decisions and direction, the values that held, the tensions that never quite resolved. The output can take many forms, including a cohesive, book-length narrative that brings the organization’s story to life for a broad audience, and a structured story archive that preserves those voices and moments as a living resource the organization can draw from over time.
Southwest Airlines
It’s not every day you get to tell a true underdog story. But then, it’s not every day that the underdog becomes one of the biggest success stories in a century. For Southwest Airline’s 50th anniversary, we were tasked with bringing that story to life in a way that felt as bold and human as the brand itself.
The work started with building a content bank of 50 stories—moments, decisions, and personalities that shaped the company’s trajectory from scrappy startup to industry leader.
Read from the content bank:
From there, I led the editorial development of two books: one a highly visual history of the airline, and the second focused on the leadership principles that fueled the company’s growth through the decades.
Part story excavation, part narrative design, the project was about more than documenting history—it was about capturing the spirit of a company that built its success on doing things differently (right down to the style guide, where “LUV” was non-negotiable).
USAA
Some companies evolve. Others stay remarkably true to who they were from the start. USAA is one of the rare ones where a 100-year-old founding idea—Service to the Services—still holds.
For their centennial, I led the development of a 100-story content bank designed to capture that throughline across a century of service. The work drew on deep interviews, archival research, and oral histories to surface the moments, decisions, and values that shaped the organization.
Read from the content bank:
The result was a living story archive that served as the foundation for USAA’s centennial communications and became source material for a full-length history book. I contributed as both a writer and editorial lead on that project—shaping the narrative structure, developing key sections, and working across contributors to ensure the story held together as a cohesive, voice-driven whole.
Sub-Zero
Luxury brands like Sub-Zero live or die by how well they translate their values into experience, and story is a big part of that.
I served as the editorial lead for Substance + Luxury, shaping the narrative direction and ensuring the book delivered a cohesive, voice-driven expression of the Sub-Zero brand. The work required balancing multiple inputs—interviews, archival material, and stakeholder perspectives—while maintaining a clear throughline around craftsmanship, innovation, and design. I guided the structure, tone, and story selection, working across teams to bring everything the full narrative into alignment. The result is a book that doesn’t just document the company’s history, but translates its ethos into a narrative experience that feels as intentional and refined as the brand itself.
