Team

Founder and CEO

Laura Menard Fitzgerald

With two decades of media and event planning experience in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, Laura Fitzgerald founded LiFt® Consulting in 2006. In 2012 LiFt and was officially endorsed as an exclusive PR Business Resource partner with L'Oreal.

Laura's passion for public relations surfaced during her years at Villanova University where she earned her BA in Communication and Business. Soon after, her public relations career began in New York City at Marina Maher Communications, a top tier PR Agency.  Laura’s time in NYC proved a pivotal jumping-off point for her career, where she managed media relations for accounts such as Johnson & Johnson's Roc Skincare, Schering Plough's Coppertone, and Procter and Gamble’s Cover Girl African-American program. Being particularly interested in beauty product-focused PR, Laura also enjoyed being a member of the Lifestyles & Trends team at the Agency, which tracked ever-changing beauty, fashion and media trends.

Laura soon joined L’Oreal USA as Public Relations Director and led all PR initiatives for Biotherm United States, executing the PR launch of the brand’s first e-commerce Website. She also coordinated the soft and grand openings of freestanding stores, directed all national and regional press relations, and executed large-scale media and consumer events at such prestigious venues as the American Museum of National History, The Sundance Film Festival, The Tents at NY Fashion Week and The NY Library.

Recently named a member of The Female Founder Collective, her mission is to provide innovative and efficient solutions to a host of PR and marketing challenges by offering one-on-one counsel, support, and execution plans to start-ups and growing businesses.

Business Advisor/Angel Investor

Sean Fitzgerald

Sean is the founder of Strabble and advises early-stage businesses on how to achieve capital efficient growth and has over 20 years of leadership experience in venture-backed SaaS companies and working on Wall Street. He has scaled venture-backed companies, executed turnarounds, pivoted businesses, and raised capital. On Wall Street, he provided capital markets analysis and trade execution to hedge funds, banks, money managers, corporations, and mortgage companies. Today, he advises early-stage companies, mentors start-ups in the Techstars and Queen City Finance accelerators, and makes Angel investments.

Most recently Sean was the Chief Revenue Officer for Climb Credit, a fintech company based in NYC, where he delivered record revenue and helped the company raise its Series B. Prior to Climb, he was the Chief Executive Officer of Savii, Inc. (Acquired), a venture-backed SaaS company that automates workflows for home care agencies. Prior to Savii, Sean was Chief Operating Officer and CFO of The GenSight Group, a SaaS New Product Development workflow platform with a focus in the Life Science industry, and Executive Vice President of education technology innovator, EverFi, backed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, and Twitter founder Evan Williams. Sean founded EverFi’s Chicago office and led the company’s expansion across 17 states in the Midwest and Mountain West. Prior to EverFi, he was a Senior Vice President at Lehman Brothers and Vice President at Bank of America, and he also spent 3 years teaching in Chicago.

Mr. Fitzgerald holds an MBA and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, a Master of Science in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University. He holds the CFA charter holder designation.

Art Directors

Melissa Sonder

Melissa Sonder is a design director with a focus on branding and system design. She shapes creative processes, builds multifaceted campaigns, and manages large-scale, integrated projects. Her expertise spans conceptual development, logotype design, print production, digital applications, exhibitions, social media and events, with clients in real estate, financial services, energy, luxury fashion, and education.

Bao-Tran Huynh

Bao-Tran Huynh simplifies complex information using attractive and artful design elements. Bao-Tran is an impassioned optimisti, innoviative problem solver and perpetual seeker of fresh ideas - across the globe and in every medium. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey and currently resides in New York City.

Photographer + Creative Director

Ryan Beshel

Ryan Beshel is the founder, creative director and photographer at SIX4 Creative. A former runway model agent and on-air personality--Ryan's precision for detail, refined eye and infectious personality are reflected in all his efforts. From brand storytelling to capturing visuals that evoke the truth of your brand, Ryan's talent and is a dynamic addition to any creative project. Ryan's work has been credited in Forbes, Sophisticated Living Magazine, CS Modern Luxury, Food & Wine, Men's Health, Chicago Tribune, Eater, USA Today, Michigan Avenue Magazine—and he's just getting started. Ryan stands six foot four, exists almost exclusively on coffee and can often be found dancing with his dog on Instagram.

Filmmaker + photographer + digital editor

Abner James

Abner James is a filmmaker, photographer, songwriter and music producer based in New York City working with brands, artists and celebrities including Google, Harper's Bazaar, L’Oréal, Redken, Ralph Lauren Fragrances, Viktor & Rolf, Yves Saint Laurent Beauty, Cutler, Hailey Beiber, Olivia Palermo, Women's Health, See Management, Macy’s, Paper Magazine, Marie Claire, Genimex Group, Matrix, Fatboy Hair, Indaba Music, Eric T. White, Chris Craymer, Cassandra Bankson, Zella Day, Eighty Ninety, Sorcha Richardson, Kaiser Chiefs, Delta Spirit, Tennis, Freelance Whales, and Rathborne.

Abner has created behind-the-scenes content throughout New York Fashion Week for multiple clients at shows including Tadashi Shoji, Levi's, Frame Denim, John Elliott + Co, Cynthia Rowley, Alice + Olivia, and many more.

Creative Director + Project Manager

Jennifer Wisniewski

Jennifer Wisniewski is a Partner and Director of Operations for SIX4 Creative. A former model turned restaurateur, Jennifer owned and operated a restaurant in Chicago's cutthroat culinary landscape for six years, before joining the team at SIX4 Creative. She now guides all client work with the vision of a creative director and the mind of an operations executive, ensuring all aspects of the project are in line with the client’s goals. Leading with her innate organizational skills, she ensures proper and timely deliverables, while never taking her eye off the bottom line. 

Jennifer resides in Chicago with her daughter Stella and is probably meditating at this very moment and trying to make her yoga class on time.

Salon Specialist: Digital Marketing solutions for Hair Salons

William Davison

With over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, website development, and SEO, William founded Occipital Salon Marketing to help salons share their creativity with the modern world. In the heart of the convenience era, everyone turns to Google to find what they need. William ensures your salon is discovered by showing up online when it counts the most!

William can make certain you not only appear online when you need to, but also that you’re represented in the way you should be. Your potential clients will see the information they are looking for, and their experience is top-notch from the moment they discover you, to the moment they return and rebook their appointments.

William resides in Tennessee.

Media Relations Specialist

Brandyn Bissinger

Three-time Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, Brandyn Bissinger, comes from the fast-paced fourth market television newsrooms in Philadelphia, where she was quick on her feet and calm under pressure. She began her career in 1998 at CBS 3 News, where she produced education, consumer and investigative segments. Brandyn moved on to Banyan Productions where she worked on the Discovery Channel gourmet food show, Epicurious. Her segments still air weekly. Her next stop was NBC 10 and soon after projects with FOX 29 News.

Brandyn is most admired by her colleagues for her work in New York City on September 11th, where after the terrorist acts, she helped create and produce the Emmy nominated feature series American Spirit, a segment honoring victims of the 9/11 attacks. 

In addition to her production experience, Brandyn has a very extensive background in the media business.  Her first hand experience in a newsroom, media contacts and ability to come up with great stories gives her partners a strong advantage when it comes to client media relations and landing media placements. LiFt is honored to have her as an asset to our team of freelance resources.

A Pennsylvania native, Brandyn resides in the Philadephia area.

SEO Specialist

Leigh-Anne

Marketing professional with over 8 years of experience in SEO, ASO, CRO, focusing on on-site optimizations and the overall website experiences to better serve the user journey. Leigh-Anne specializes in building relationships between organizations and key targets.

Founder of Truitt Scale Leigh-Anne resides in New Mexico.

WRITER / DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGIST

Jolene Turner

Jolene is a storyteller and a writer using words, images, videos and social media to bring brands, products, people and messages to life.

Jolene specializes in the beauty industry for digital and print content writing, as well as communications materials for press and influencers. Jolene met LiFt when she worked as the senior editor for American Salon magazine.

Jolene currently resides in the Minneapolis-St Paul area.