It’s all connected.

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I come from a long line of Cajuns—on both sides. My ancestors left France and made their way through England to Nova Scotia before relocating to Louisiana as part of Le Grand Dérangement (the Great Upheaval). I like to think that my tenacity, connection to the land, love of food, and passion for place comes from them.

My childhood was spent in Lafayette, Louisiana until the 1980s upheaval brought on by the oil bust and the relocation of hundreds of careers and families to Houston. When it was time to make a college choice, something about Louisiana called to me, and choosing LSU would end up being a pivotal decision for my life.

At LSU I found myself in a cohort of people who would not only become lifelong friends, but in many cases colleagues and collaborators. For me, that journey started in a parking lot talking about public policy—how Louisiana leaders had made a series of choices in the 1960s and 70s that set the course for the state’s economic decline in the 1980s and 90s, and how making a new set of choices could help the state adjust course to a more prosperous future.

My friend Stephen Moret called it ‘The Louisiana Miracle’ and that conversation lasted hours. We talked about what would be possible for the state we both loved and what it would take to make it happen. We figured it would take at least 25 years to take root. We even talked about the dinner we could have to celebrate that journey. I still have the invitations we made.

After undergrad we all went our separate ways. Many of us to grad school, some to work. I ended up back in Houston and ultimately completed a Masters program at the University of Houston in Organizational Development. But I missed Louisiana. And every once and a while that vision we’d talked about in the parking lot gave me a nudge. I made the move to New Orleans and worked for Paul Prudhomme then back to Baton Rouge where I managed the region’s farmers’ market. While this early chapter of my work life doesn’t directly relate in obvious ways to the next decades of my career, I’d suggest that my first jobs showed me who I could be creatively, what I could build, and the power of connection.

2005 - 2016

Planting Seeds for a Louisiana Miracle

I started at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber (BRAC) not long after grad school in 2005, working for Stephen Moret, who hired me before I fully understood what economic development even was. In those early days of BRAC, we took it all on—from rebranding, producing a quarterly publication, and executing immersive events to publishing policy papers and executing a grassroots campaign to make governmental ethics a statewide priority.

When Moret and some of my BRAC colleagues took roles at Louisiana Economic Development (LED) in 2008, I joined Peter Mayer Advertising to support LED’s work from the agency side—and to help them navigate their first economic development client. It was at Peter Mayer that Dianne Mikeska showed me what a real agency + client partnership looks like. (Full circle moment: Dianne and I reconnected later in our careers during my work in Virginia—and we still celebrate our work anniversary every July 7th.)

Ultimately, I made the move in-house to LED. As Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, I was responsible for all of the marketing, advertising, and public relations activities for the department as well as strategic outreach to both in-state stakeholders and national and international influencers and site consultants.

Our team led the effort to launch Louisiana Job Connection, a first-of-its-kind website that used an algorithm to match job seekers with job opportunities in Louisiana. To attract former residents back to the state for unprecedented job opportunities, her team also implemented the award-winning Come Home, Louisiana campaign as well as eight regional quality of life websites state designed to help companies recruit talent unfamiliar with Louisiana. 

At the end of the political term, I left government and consulted for the Louisiana Association for Business and Industry (LABI), the state’s Chamber of Commerce, to help reimagine their membership structure, invigorate their programming, and develop a new website and communication vehicles.

2016 - 2017

One Winter in Denver

Mid-2016, we decided that we wanted to explore another part of the country. At the time, Atlas was one of a small handful of agencies specializing in economic development and tourism. It was exciting to be able to engage with communities across the country to bring their strategies and visions to life.

I was loving being a consultant and we were so excited to be Coloradans. And then Moret called—he had been tapped to lead the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) as they set to transform the organization—and he wanted me to join the team. We were on the move again.

2017 - 2023

Falling in Love with Virginia

From 2017 to 2023, I served as Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. Those six years were formative — for me personally and professionally. Our team rebranded the agency, launched three websites, produced 17 issues of the Virginia Economic Review, and built Team Virginia as a private-sector funded marketing partnership.

In the fall of 2017, I was tapped to lead Virginia's Amazon HQ2 bid — coordinating proposals for three regions in six weeks, then managing the Northern Virginia pitch through the announcement. Landing HQ2 was a team effort (ultimately a 400 person team effort) in every sense.

Seeing the Other Side in South Carolina

2023 - 2024

In 2023, I joined Global Location Strategies as COO and VP of Marketing — my first time working formally on the site selector side of the business. GLS utilizes the Entrepreneurship Operating System (EOS), and Didi Caldwell and I partnered as a Visionary-Integrator team. In one year, we achieved major milestones for the company including hitting growth goals, opening a new office in Amsterdam, spinning off a new tech company (Strata Platforms), and implementing numerous new systems and processes.

Learning EOS, leading a company in partnership, seeing the site selection process from the corporate side, and experiencing Greenville as it flourished were fulfilling on multiple levels. We loved exploring the Upstate by foot and bike, and no one was more surprised when Baton Rouge called in 2024 than me.

Making Things Better in BTR

2024 - 2026

In 2024, I returned to where it all started — back to Louisiana’s Capital Region to lead BRAC (now the Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership) as President and CEO. The Board gave me a clear mandate—they wanted to shake things up and propel the organization and the region to the next level.

Two years of meaningful work: rebuilding the business development function around a cluster strategy, opening a Houston office, championing the Learn and Earn Act, launching Better in BTR, and completing a full organizational rebrand. And the recipient of Site Selection’s Mac Conway Award as a top Regional Economic Development Organization under my leadership.

I'm proud of what we built together.

When I’m not working, you can find me with my husband David Odom and our sheepadoodle Mambo out and about exploring the world and having adventures!

  • The Atlas Project

  • The Echo Project

  • The Brightline Project

  • The Northgrid Project