Samantha B.

Experience

• 

  Helix

  Fractional Creative Director

  Jun 2025 - Present

  • Brand strategy: Building brand's first B2B brand strategy and anchoring a brand refresh to this strategy as creative director.
  • Ops: Brought creative ops to marketing, ensuring files can always be found, opened without resistance, and are the source of truth.
  • Marketing: Modernized brand expression across case studies, social, & tradeshow — developing a new approach for a conservative, legacy brand
• 

  Cerebras

  Fractional Marketing Designer

  Jan 2026 - Sep 2026

  • Pitch deck: Restructured 400-slide pitch deck, layering in narrative structure to make complex AI hardware positioning land with investors.
  • Company PowerPoint: Built ~40 custom slide templates for 1,000-person org, replacing ad hoc system with a scalable consistent framework.
  • AI workflows: Automated the copy handoff between marketers and designers with an AI agent — a custom Word-to-Figma plugin, which syncs copy straight into a Figma file built with auto-layout
• 

  Adobe

  Senior Visual Designer (Contractor with The Argonaut)

  Jan 2023 - Apr 2025

  Adobe is a global software company that creates tools and cloud services for digital content, marketing automation, and document management, including Creative Cloud and Marketo.

  • Partnered closely with the content team and Adobe stakeholders to refine messaging, prioritize marketer benefits, and iterate storyboards through stakeholder reviews.
  • Storyboarded and directed a Marketo Measure explainer video — signed off in one round by Adobe's brand team, atypical for a hero asset
  • Produced whitepapers and social assets for Adobe Summit, maintaining strict brand compliance amid a continuously evolving corporate identity
• 

  Apple

  Senior Visual Designer (Contractor with The Argonaut)

  Jan 2023 - Apr 2025

  • Tamed a notoriously chaotic WWDC production cycle by building pixel-perfect Mac Sonoma screens in Sketch to scale the entire visual system.
  • Pitched and led first internal photoshoot for Apple 3DVM — proving the concept and prompting my team to build a full photography practice
  • Translated technical complexity into executive-ready Keynote presentations, enabling C-suite decision-making at leadership level.
  • Visualized in-development Apple technologies across Keynotes, signage, intranet, and video — giving creative teams assets to carry forward.
• 

  Protiviti

  Digital Art Director

  Mar 2017 - Jul 2021

  • Drove strategy and design of digital and brand initiatives.
  • Managed and built design systems for team across Xd, internal DAM, brand guides, Adobe libraries, and photography systems.
  • Spearheaded design of editorial site, Vision by Protiviti, which included IA, UX, UI, branding, and naming, as well as WCAG 2.0 accessibility standard.
  • Overhauled employee onboarding through development of interactive presentations that transformed new employee engagement.
  • Oversaw management of brand guide and style guides, recommending updates to VP of Marketing based on evolution of brand, trends, and competitors.
  • Ignited energy of content marketing team and output by designing web versions of work previously done only as long-form PDFs.
  • Developed prototypes for AI-powered HR tool, as well as joined the hiring team as a consultant to hire the first product designer for the firm.
  • Audited and then expanded the brand within the first few months from just a few asset types and templates to a flexible system praised for its ingenuity for innovating within bounds.
  • Identified the need for and built in partnership with marketing a playbook that established governance and UI design system for creating digital intellectual property (IP).
  • Developed prototypes for Protiviti's first-ever enterprise SaaS, an AI-powered HR tool.
  • Collaborated with QA team and internal and external development teams to hand off assets and provide documentation in an agile environment.
• 

  Thelen

  Digital Art Director

  Nov 2011 - Nov 2016

  • For 5 years, I worked at Thelen as the solo art director. Through a balance of skill sets, I designed strategic approaches for 30+ B2B and B2C clients' brands, websites and marketing.
  • Conducted user interviews of bakers across U.S. for Red Star Yeast, then synthesized, wrote, and delivered a new brand strategy to the marketing team.
  • Increased event engagement by 3,000% using an experiential strategy for a water education group.
  • Developed classic UI design strategies still in use today for the Upper Midwest's leading bread manufacturer.
  • Implemented front-end dev for several client sites as well as custom WordPress and Kentico CMS setups.
  • Multi-tasked as copywriter, developing copy for advertisements, publications, and websites for both B2B and B2C clients, focusing on conversational tone.