Buzz Magazine Pacific Northwest

I knew there had to be something more to life than squeezing a few hobbies into my free time, and more to work than making rich people richer. So my fiancé and I quit our jobs, sold all our stuff (including our condo and cars), got married, and left the country with no plans and no set return date. We learned a lot while traveling the world on a shoestring budget but two things bubbled up to the top of my mind when we returned broke and needing a career reboot. The first was that I’d realized it is possible to work for companies and causes you care about. The evidence was everywhere because everything is (or can be) designed, so I just needed to get picky. The second was that as I designer I had a lot of influence over businesses and consumers, and with that power comes a responsibility (in my mind at least) to use that power to make the world and people’s lives better. So I set out to run my business and provide my services in way that felt more regenerative than extractive. Where that would lead, I hadn’t the first clue, but I was ready to find out.

The business we (my wife and I) started was a “sustainable brand design studio”, now called Modern Species. We started out working with small, local businesses who focused on social justice, health and wellness, sustainable food and other causes that we felt good about contributing to with our design super powers. Overtime we found a niche in sustainable products and developed a deep expertise in sustainable design and the natural and organic food space.

Fast forward eleven years and we’re still focusing on the same basic mission (helping sustainable product brands launch, evolve, and grow) but we’re expanding beyond design services to also build a learning community called Evolve, and toying with the idea of launching some of our own mission-driven products.

Oakland, California is where my story starts in the mid-80s, where I born to a Polish-American mother that left the mid-West for sunnier California, and to a Venezuelan father that was studying holistic health on scholarship. They met in an Indian ashram, and within a week, they fell in love and departed for Venezuela to attempt a life there. Plans changed, and they quickly returned to California, I was born, and we spent four relatively happy years in the Bay Area. We lived humbly, but we were happy. We moved to Portland, Oregon in 1988 after close friends encouraged us to come north. Portland is the city I will always call home. Despite living abroad and moving to the East Coast to make a life in NYC, I always returned to Portland. For so long I resisted the thought of living in Portland long-term, but as time has passed, I think this is the city for me.

That being said, my identification with my Venezuelan culture and the years I lived and traveled abroad in Latin American have been equally as important to my personal and professional formation as Portland has been. Freshly graduated from Lewis & Clark College with a double major in Psychology and Hispanic Studies, I had the vague desire to “be of help” and live in Latin America, so I applied to the Peace Corps. Six months later, I was on a plane to Nicaragua to train as a Community Health Educator and live for 24 months in San Sebastian de Yalí, a small semi-urban village nestled In a valley between lush, green mountains. In my official role, I taught sexual and reproductive health education classes to high school students, and nutrition classes to pregnant women. We also organized activities and festivals about HIV/AIDS prevention. It’s important to note that I learned even more outside of my official educator role by listening to and learning from my community. I immersed myself in Yaleño culture by watching Nicaraguan matriarchs make sopa de gallina con albondigas (chicken soup with meatballs), playing soccer at night with my teenager male buddies in the concrete plaza, and exploring the hills and rural communities that surrounded the town with the high schoolers I taught during the week.

Upon my return to Portland, I still had the desire to be of service. During four years, I worked in direct service at Planned Parenthood, and at a local rape crisis center, the Sexual Assault Resource Center. I worked closely with men, women, and youth of many backgrounds, cultures, ages, socioeconomic statuses and abilities. My experience as a middle class, straight, cis-gendered, white Venezuelan young woman with little experience of firsthand trauma oftentimes didn’t mirror that of the people I worked with. I think my innate desire to listen to understand, and my genuine interest in their experience was what allowed me to connect with the people I supported, and to do my job well, despite the differences between us.

And then in 2013, I surprised everyone by making a career shift into graphic design. (I promise it will all make sense – keep reading on!) I deeply loved the field work I was doing but after years of not taking care of myself and overpromising my time, the burnout was real. I realized a long-term career in public health was not sustainable. I set out to be the graphic designer behind non-profits and global health organizations to the end I could still exercise my support of social justice, but from a different angle. And that is the journey I have been on these past seven years.

I’ve been in tech and marketing for 20+ years in both the B2B and B2C space. My career includes being president and owner of a Portland-based boutique digital agency for 16 + years, being a Portland radio disc jockey, a producer of an online cooking show for WebMD, being a content strategist of a 26 million dollar global enterprise campaign and currently a server technologies customer stories strategist for a leading tech company.

The 2B Bolder Podcast was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration to my two daughters and other young women out there, encouraging them to show up and to be bolder and know that anything they dream of is possible.

This site brings together an original podcast series, a collection of articles and books that highlight amazing women in business and tech from around the world.

On the 2B Bolder Podcast, you will hear inspiring stories of how successful women in business and tech have worked hard to build great careers. Learn about their passions, their journey, their challenges, and their advice to the next generation of women.

The 2B Bolder Podcast is designed to provide you first-hand access to some amazing women. Guests will include women from leading enterprise companies to startups, women execs, to coders, account execs, engineers and innovators.

In December 2010, I graduated with a BA in Marketing and International Relations at Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, WA. One month later, I moved back to Portland and found a job working for a startup (at the time) called Intuitive Digital. There I learned many of the now prominently used digital marketing strategies – Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), User Experience (UX), and mobile-friendly website design. After 2 years there helping small businesses and local nonprofits, I worked downtown for Sq1 (Square One), where I helped strategize and implement SEO for enterprises like KinderCare, Petco, and Hyundai. I was looking for a way to make extra cash so in 2018, I started freelancing on the side through Fiverr. I only offered 2 gigs and invested 5-10 hours a week to helping entrepreneurs worldwide. After 1 year on Fiverr, I made a few grand, earned 69 5-star reviews, and was promoted to a Level 2 Seller (one below a Pro). It didn’t even cross my mind, but some of my customers were asking for additional digital marketing services. I made a few clients that way and got the confidence and foundation I needed to create my own company. I took the leap of faith in March 2019 but didn’t establish my company, Good Aura, until May. In 1 year’s time, I got my own office in the Big Pink building, hired 2 interns, and had the pleasure of working with local businesses as well as larger companies like Michaels and Provenance Hotels.

So, I got divorced… well, starting about nine years ago. My ex really enjoyed the process and kept… inviting me to join her in court, where she would present her interpretation of reality and me and herself. Anyway, long story short, I got me some trust issues.

So I wasn’t in a place where I could jump into another relationship.

Instead, I paid attention to being a father and working on my career and myself.

And every time I would work with someone buying or selling a house, I’d figure out ways to make it go better, things I could do to help them figure out what they really wanted and how to go about getting it.

Whenever I’d work out a process or a system or a rule, I’d write it down.

After seven or eight years, I was finally over the scorched earth campaign my ex waged. And I thought a lot about it and decided that yes, I wanted to have someone else in my life.

So one day, I was driving my daughter to school –– I guess she was 11 –– and we were talking about relationships and friendships and how to tell whether someone is truly a friend or if they’re just somebody whose company you enjoy and it hit me. These same rules might work for finding relationships.

So I went through them all and holy crap, they all lined up.

That’s when I decided to write a book.

Can You Clear Me Now is a music supervision, clearance, and strategy company specializing in all forms of film, broadcast commercial campaigns, and branded/digital content. We facilitate quotes and clearance of temp/reach songs you want to use, or source, curate, and clear ideal replacement “style-a-like” songs. For every project and its unique music choices, it’s always our top interest of supporting your project and properly representing how its audience should feel, while keeping within your budget, schedule, and distribution terms.

CYCMN has serviced music needs for over 50 films including Oscar-nominated documentary ‘RBG’, HBO/Focus Features Sesame Street project ‘Street Gang’, a viral NIKE short film, and a doc produced by Seth and Lauren Miller Rogen about Alzheimer’s. Brand/corporate clients and campaigns include Microsoft, XBOX, Hims, Tom Ford, Hy-Vee, Keen Footwear, NIKE, AT&T, Sephora, and Macy’s.

Prior to working in film and commercial content, CYCMN owner Joseph Miller worked at Cherry Lane/BMG music publishing, A&E Networks, and with CBS Sports, where he curated the music package for Super Bowl XLVII in addition to years worth of NCAA March Madness Tournaments, and NFL football games (in-show, bumper, promo and marketing use).

Joseph is an active member of The Guild of Music Supervisors (who recognized him in 2019 for “Best Music Supervision for Films Budgeted Under $5 Million”), Oregon Media Production Association, The New York Post Alliance, Independent Filmmaker Project, and Filmmakers Alliance. You’ll find us based in Portland, OR – but working / connecting / collaborating throughout the US, Canada, and the U.K.

I created an LLC in 2006, Nataworry Photography, and did wedding and portrait work on the side of my full time corporate marketing job until 2009 when I took on photography full time. I’m self taught thanks to online tutorials and a couple of in-person classes. Since 2010 I’ve been volunteering for Seattle radio station 90.3 kexp.org such that I photograph world famous musicians/bands that play live in the studio. It is there that I’ve honed my ability to create compelling portraits, mostly of multiple people (vs. solo artists) in as little as 5 minutes. Pre-pandemic, my days were filled with business headshots/portraits, lifestyle (people at work) and corporate and private event photography.

Desperate Electric initially started as a four piece rock band called DASH in February 2018. Ben Morris and I (Kayti Korte), had been in another band together prior to DASH, and we’d also been dating for two years. We started writing songs together in December 2017 and realized pretty quickly that we had something to say, together, and wanted to start our own project. We played our first show in March 2018, recorded our first album, and went on our first tour in October of that year, and played as many shows as we could. Ben and I’s goal has always been to tour as full time as possible, and we made that clear from the get go. Unfortunately, touring is incredibly demanding and not especially lucrative. It takes a special kind of lunatic to sign up to live in a van with four other people and the only certainty being playing the shows. By the end of the year we had replaced our bass player and on January 1st, 2019 our drummer quit two weeks prior to our second tour, and longest to date. That tour saw the very beginnings of us using midi drum tracks. Unable to find a drummer available for a three week tour with two weeks notice, Ben, being the musical and production guru he is, created midi drum tracks for all of our songs in two days. After that tour we lost our second bass player and a year after DASH was founded, we were right back where we started. Just the two of us. We hadn’t stopped booking, so we found ourselves six weeks out from our next tour with no band. We found a drummer from Chicago, flew him to Montana for the tour and I started playing bass seven days before our first show. We started that tour with me, a brand new bass player, and Paul, a drummer we knew nothing about. After that tour, which actually went much better than expected, we found ourselves once again without a band. After a few more drummers and hiccups, we made the transition to the duo we are today. Ben worked on the production of our drum tracks, creating a combination of pre-recorded live drums and midi instrumentation and we hit the road as the duo. We kept booking tours and were finally able to make our goal of touring full time a reality. We moved out of our house and into our van in July and hit the road for the rest of the year. On February 10th of this year, we changed our name to Desperate Electric–the name of our EP we released last year, the first foray into the electro soul duo. And here we are now!