My name is Maria Schechter. I am a digital marketing specialist and an eco-artist. After college graduation, I worked with the Seattle Art Museum for three years, co-created an international arts collective turned non-profit from 2000-2005, which led to a MacArthur nomination and the initiation of my graduate work with New York University in Visual Arts Administration. Since 2009, I have been a creative design consultant with a platform called Cultured Social. The creative projects, campaigns, and unique experiences I designed for numerous clients have been an accumulative wonder and an absolute honor.  I grew up in the Silicon Valley and pursued my higher education on the East Coast and the EU.  My worldview has been shaped by living in South East Asia and Germany and traveling to 17 countries. I realized we are all connected.  By encouraging engagement, we find answers to some of the world’s greatest challenges. Good work is never done alone.

 

I have had the privilege to foster relationships with museums such as The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University in California, The Santa Cruz Art Museum in California and The Seattle Art Museum in Washington. I was an invited speaker with Wisdom 2.0, Santa Cruz Arts Council sharing insights with local businesses and was invited to mentor on the National Social Media Business Council representing the Clorox Company. I served as a board member with the Seattle Art Museum, The Santa Cruz Mountain Arts Center, and The Homeless Garden Project. I have worked with enterprise clients such as Cisco Systems and The Clorox Company. The Clorox Company project was a fun, high engagement digital marketing design project. I co-created: MyCloroxIdea. The project started at a zero base across all social media platforms. I scaled the project by 200% in one year. I accomplished this by identifying influencers and bringing them into the community. Each brand was considered an ecosystem and within that grouping it represented one brand. This is where I would have each group break off into testing products, providing feedback for points which led to free products and product testing, developing games that provided market insights to help navigate our strategy and meet the goal of the myCloroxidea campaign: to have consumers provide ideation on new product development. When ideas were chosen and brought to market, the project found its path. My work there was complete. In addition to campaign development, I managed the social media properties for 11 of the Clorox brand products: Brita, Burt's Bees, Fresh Step, Hidden Valley Ranch, Kingsford Charcoal, Pine-Sol, Tilex and a variety of Clorox branded products. For the Clorox project, I co-developed a game, which landed a review by The Harvard Business Review, Social Media Examiner, and The New York Times. In addition to being a design specialist, I also represented The Clorox Company on the National Social Media Business Council. A few of my colleagues from the council who co-mentored with me on design challenges as managers represented Army.com, Boeing, Facebook, Hershey, and Twitter. My skillset is eclectic, versatile, and knee deep in research for what is influencing our world today. I have always approached art and business as a hybrid of both minds. I believe they exist together simultaneously.