Kristen is a creative manager working to engage new climate audiences through creative campaigns and storytelling. She consults climate organizations focused on expanding their audience reach and impact, and with her company, Plot Shift Media, she supports independent artists and creators developing original stories and impact campaigns that challenge dominant narratives on climate.

Kristen found her passion for creative communications and storytelling while volunteering with the NY State coalition that successfully lobbied for the passage of the 2023 All Electric Buildings Act. Alongside a powerful group of community organizers, she managed the production of campaigns designed to counteract misinformation, reach diverse new audiences, and mobilize New Yorkers to take action in support of progressive climate policy. While there she also led early discovery work for climate think tank Switchbox, (formerly Win Climate), a first of its kind organization focused on research and analysis to support state and local-level policy making, and debunk disingenuous and misleading narratives about the the benefits and challenges of electrification.

With a background in tech and experience as a creative lead at social impact design studio (and World Changing Company of the Year finalist) Dalberg Design, Kristen has a portfolio of award-winning UX design & strategy work, and a deep toolbox of cross-disciplinary skills, including creative team management, qualitative research & audience segmentation, creative facilitation, storytelling, and KM and learning processes. She has spoken globally about design for social impact, and has facilitated countless design training and capacity-building efforts for clients, colleagues, and friends. She has worked throughout East Africa and globally for clients including Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, Mercy Corps AFA, and the UN.

Kristen’s career began in the San Francisco Bay Area where she was the first in-house UX Designer at the Internet Archive, an treasured institution that offered to pay her c. 2014 entry-level salary in Bitcoin (an amount that would be worth million$ today) but she said no. She went on to study emerging technologies and Media Design Practices at Art Center College of Design, where she won the Designmatters Business for Social Innovation Fellowship. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Environmental Engineering, from Washington University in St. Louis, where she served also as a Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic.

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