WHO: Carmen Marti, writer, editor, project manager
WHAT: Content creation and management
WHY: Experienced, flexible, strategic, energetic
WHEN: Now! cmarti@carmenmarti.com
In 2022 I was asked to become managing editor of Columbia Business Magazine, the alumni publication for Columbia University Business School. As a contractor, I contribute to the editorial strategy, manage writers, edit copy, and write stories.
In 2023, the magazine was named a finalist for Strategy — Best Content Marketing Program: Education by the Content Marketing Institute.
Sample Clips:
In 2016, I was recruited to be a "partner" in the Communications Office of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. My role as a remote writer was to improve the school's national rankings by working with the social media and media relations teams to promote faculty research through all communications channels: website, newsletters. emails, print materials, and the media. During my time there, which ended in 2020 with the beginning of Covid, Marshall achieved its highest rank ever in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Business Schools roundup, finishing at 17 in 2019, up from 20 in 2018, 24 in 2017, and 31 in 2016.
Sample clips
In the summers of 2022 and 2023, I was invited by the Office of External Affairs at the University of Michigan at Dearborn to facilitate a communications retreat and annual strategy session for the 15-member team.
The interactive agendas not only prompted working sessions between colleagues who do not always interact on projects, unexpected insights into the needs of the office, and dialogue that team members said has strengthened their relationships as well as their work.
The University of Chicago was one of my earliest clients and I continue to work with various faculty, divisions, departments, and schools today. My work flow began in 1995, when I was an outsourced editor of Medicine on the Midway, the alumni magazine for the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine. I went on to working for the University of Chicago Hospitals' development office, producing its bi-annual newsletter, and the newsletter for the Kovler Diabetes Center, as well as a print and audio book on coping with macular degeneration.
For the University, I have done special projects for the central communications office that range from project managing a book on architecture to an installation on the history of economics at UChicago for the Becker Friedman Institute. Most recently I provided internal communications services for a software implementation, my third such implementation for the University.
Sample Clips:
In the early 2000s, I was recruited to cover events for the nascent website of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, now the UChicago Booth School. These ranged from research announcements to featured speakers to panel discussions, all in 300 words or less, which was considered best practice during that time.
Interview I conducted with Raphael Viñoly, architect of Booth's Charles M. Harper Center
In 2021, as a associate of the communications and strategy consultancy, Peterson Rudgers Group, I worked with partner and co-founder Julie Peterson on a communications assessment for Milton Academy, a K–12 private school outside Boston. Working remotely, we conducted a full exploration of the school's communications history and program, interviewed members of the community ranging from students to faculty to the head of school and members of the board of trustees, and produced an executive summary and full report, including additional recommendations. The team was subsequently invited back to facilitate next steps.
In the early 2000s while working on projects for the University of Chicago, I was recruited by a former UChicago fundraiser to become editor of the alumni magazine for the Illinois College of Optometry, his new employer. I served in this capacity and as a senior leadership speech writer for five years.
In 2006 I began pitching stories to Chicago Life magazine, an insert in the Chicago edition of the Sunday New York Times newspaper. In the five years I contributed stories, I wrote largely about biomedicine and healthcare, with other stories focused on education and politics.
Working as a contractor for the University of Chicago Communications Office in 2014, I served as lead writer of the University's winning submission for the Obama Presidential Center.
One of my earliest editorial roles began when a 1989 summer internship at Insider Chicago magazine became part-time work as an editorial assistant until the magazine folded in the early 1900s.
In the early 2000s I began writing for UIC Medicine magazine, the publication of the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School. I covered news for the magazine, and went on to write for development office projects, including a case statement.
In 2012 and 2013 I served as project manager for the production of "Building Ideas, an architectural guide to the University of Chicago." Published by the University of Chicago Press, I managed a team that included creative contractors, members of the UChicago creative team, and an editor at the UChicago Press.