Romy is a strategy and communications designer and a writer. She is currently exploring the role of imagination and narrative transportation as a tool to crack open new pathways for thinking critically and compassionately about societal issues; working on launching a civic media network; and collaborating on different initiatives with the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab. She’s passionate about how we can prototype new collective conversations as part of its speculative interfaces for emergent futures practice.
Earlier this year, she partnered with Technology, Humans and Taste, incorporating creative research methods as part of their Dim Sum creative process. Previously, she was the Head of Research & Strategy for VaynerMedia. During her time there, she created a new discipline and grew a team of 20 cultural researchers and strategists. Her philosophy is that everything is interesting and nothing is useless, and she loves embedding herself in various subcultures. She has also taught the “Everything is Media” course for creatives at Miami Ad School.
Recent projects include: researching the right storytelling levers to start a new conversation about nuclear weapons, adapting Kenji Yoshino’s workshops based on his book “Covering: the Hidden Assault on Civil Rights” into a digital / interactive format, creating the business and brand strategy for a participative storytelling platform, and re-imagining the role of an apparel giant in a shifting sports media landscape.
In her spare time, she writes about basketball, the ritual of sport and fandom for ESPN and SB Nation affiliates, watches as many dance performances as she can, and is developing a podcast called The Third Person, where each episode will be a thought experiment — first deconstructing, then de-familiarizing different facets of our networked society.