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 Meet the Team

 
 

Dynamic, Creative, Passionate & Intentional.

Here at Mountain Laurel Digital, we choose to see the people behind the brand. With a love for collaboration and building transparent relationships, we develop dynamic and creative strategies to support the rich and thriving online presences of the businesses we serve.

With an intentional approach to our work, we aim to build our communities, empower teams, be a steward of sustainability, and create opportunities. We're passionate about the work we do, the impacts it makes, and most importantly, the people we get to work alongside.

Core Team
Casey Nifong
Casey Nifong

Founder and Search Strategy Director

Casey Nifong is the Founder of marketing and branding agency Mountain Laurel Digital (MLD) where she elevates the missions of purpose-driven brands that are paving the way for a better future. Casey holds over 13 years of experience in the marketing space and is a sought-after expert for her knowledge of SEO & Generative AI in Search, market research, branding, and digital strategy. Casey is also a passionate environmentalist and advocate for generational impact, she specializes in working on projects that focus on organic products, sustainability, b corp initiatives, and investing in the future of our world. A coveted thought leader in the digital marketing space, Casey founded MLD in 2017 with the desire for the agency to become more than just a functional need, and instead become a driving force for good themselves. As a founder she challenges the traditional hectic agency culture, leading with kindness and compassion first to create more sustainable long-term solutions for her staff and clients.

Karolina Dróżdż
Karolina Dróżdż

Digital Marketing Director

Karolina Dróżdż is our Digital Marketing Director. She started her online marketing career in 2014 when she moved to Stockholm from Poland, her home country. Since then, she's worked in various aspects of digital marketing, with a strong focus on paid advertising. She has experience with affiliates, influencers, website user experience and CRO, web analytics, programmatic buying, as well as more strategic client management. She’s passionate about sustainable brands and supporting businesses with a purpose.

Jenny Clark
Jenny Clark

Content Marketing Director

Jenny is our Content Marketing Director with a deep passion for creative brand storytelling. She loves the challenge behind content strategy and development to create messaging that speaks to the soul of a brand and the people it touches. After starting her career in 2016, with a Journalism degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, (Go Heels!) she has worked in both a small agency environment and on an in-house marketing team, before finding her place at MLD. She finds energy and fulfillment from her work in sustainability messaging and loves using the written word as a creative outlet to inform, inspire, and create change. If she’s not writing, you’ll find her cooking up something delicious or spending time with her very cute (but very mischievous) Golden Retriever, Cove.

Kirsten Clauer
Kirsten Clauer

Interactive Director

Kirsten is our Web Developer and Interactive Director. She has experience working in a small agency environment developing and designing websites and landing pages, running paid social media campaigns, and installing web analytics and tracking. She received her degree in New Media from UNC - Asheville, with a minor in Computer Science. Her passions lie within the realm that technology and art intersect, and she relies on her creative intuition to solve problems! In her free time you can find her hiking, drawing, playing games, and spending time with her beloved canine companion.

Yumi Shill
Yumi Shill

Operations & Digital Project Manager

Yumi is our Digital Project Manager with a restorative vision that lead her to deeply connect with MLD’s passion to bring positive change to the world. She finds the creative process life-giving, especially when it involves collaborating with passionate minds. Yumi has experience in Project Management and has previously worked in an agency-setting handling numerous large scale accounts. One of her favorite parts of working in the marketing industry is the relationships she gets to build along the way. That care for clients is the foundation which propels her into effectively building out of their brands and businesses.

Ben Quirk
Ben Quirk

Digital Marketing Web Developer Strategist

Ben is our Digital Marketing Web Developer Strategist. He has over a decade of experience building websites and interactive experiences using a wide range of technology and frameworks. No matter the tools, in the end it’s all just html, css, and javascript. (And usually PHP - thank you Wordpress!) He has a Front End Engineering degree from the Iron Yard and an associates degree in IT Networking and Security Management from ECPI. Outside of coding, he loves hanging out with his beagle, drawing on his iPad, reading science fiction, and eating Thai food.

Dan Nifong
Dan Nifong

Strategic Operational Partner

Dan is our strategic operational partner. He has an extensive background in business strategy that helps us pave the way from vision to reality. His diverse range of business and people leadership makes him our go to for all things high level and big picture. He guides our leadership team to stay focused while providing a differentiated perspective on our long term people and client needs. His passion is building amazing, sustainable business as forces for good.

Malia Campbell
Malia Campbell

HR and Team Wellness Partner

Malia is passionate about helping people and organizations reach their endless potential. She has a diverse professional background in business development, marketing, human resources and organizational design. Malia loves working with businesses to understand their culture, strengths, pain points and long-term goals. She uses those findings to design, implement and improve programs, processes and systems and to coach leaders and managers. She has experience building talent recruitment and hiring systems; learning and development programs, organizational values and mission statements, well-being programs, benefits, policies and beyond. Her end goal is to create enriching experiences and conditions in the workplace that bring out the best in others, spark creativity and lead to meaningful, high-impact work.

Cooper
Cooper

Constant Companion

Cooper is our studio companion (and de facto mascot) and can be found laying by a fire, expectantly looking up at you ready to give love, or simply laying his head on your knee - he is complete just knowing you are with him and he is with you. He is the constant companion and provides loyal support to of us in Studio 44 as only a sweet, squishy, yellow pup can. We're so thankful to be able to have such a lovable little guy roaming our creative space and offering those supportive moments in collaboration.

Be sure to look out for him if you pass by our studio! You just might see him waiting expectantly for new friends...

Interested in joining our team? Check out our Job Postings!

 
 

Creative and Digital Strategy Partners

 
 

Pratika MALLAMPALLI

Content Marketing Specialist

  • Pratika Mallampalli is a passionate writer with skills across copywriting, content writing and journalism. After years of covering culture and lifestyle for publications like VICE, Huffington Post and Elle, she found her professional self in content marketing writing, where she gets a kick out of telling her clients’ stories in engaging ways.

    For Pratika, writing for businesses is a practice—a specialized skill that takes constant attention, reflection and evolution. With every word she puts down on the page, she aims to speak to her readers’ minds and their deepest concerns—in their language.

    MLD’s culture of immersive and collaborative relationships with its clients facilitates this style of content and that’s what draws her to our agency.

COURTNEY BOWMAN

Graphic Designer 

  • Nearing a decade of design experience, Courtney brings thoughtful art to the world with her love for aesthetically pleasing design, contrast, and the use of white space. Courtney has comprehensive experience in the design industry including, art direction, website design, in-store graphics, illustration, and layout design. Outside of art and design, Courtney can be found baking, painting, traveling with her husband, and taking a hot yoga class.

Renee Hartwick

Squarespace Website Designer

  • Renee Hartwick (she/her) is a Squarespace designer and educator, collaborating with heart-centered businesses on soulful website designs that help them to feel empowered and authentic online.

    With a focus on supportive guidance within an intentional design process, Renee's goals are not only to unearth & beautifully reflect her clients' businesses, but also to make website technology less daunting & make entrepreneurship as empowering and exciting as it can be.

    With services designed to be accessible at any business stage, Renee enjoys using creativity and strategy to bring entrepreneurial visions to life online. Her clients leave feeling confident, knowledgable, and connected...to their businesses and their websites. She has done this incredibly fun work through her company, Hart & Soul Co., since 2018.

    When Renee is not working on website wizardry, she can usually be found in the woods with her husband, their dogs, and their built-out sprinter van, most likely reading Elizabeth Gilbert or Brene Brown or planning out her next DIY home project. As an Asheville native, she loves being part of AIGA & enjoys connecting so deeply with the creative magic to be found all over Asheville and WNC.

 

Heba Said

International SEO Specialist & Consultant

  • Heba Said is an accomplished International SEO Specialist and Consultant, empowering businesses to flourish in the ever-evolving digital world. With over 10 years of experience, she possesses a keen understanding of search engine algorithms and cultural nuances, ensuring her strategies bridge geographic borders effortlessly.

    Heba's expertise lies in her ability to unlock organic growth across diverse markets. Whether collaborating with industry leaders or guiding small businesses, she crafts customized SEO solutions that drive targeted traffic and maximize online visibility.

    Driven by a commitment to knowledge sharing, Heba actively contributes to the SEO community. She is a proud member of Women in Tech SEO and regularly shares her insights on popular online platforms. This dedication to fostering collaboration and education solidifies her position as a trusted resource within the industry.

 

PARKER ADAMS

Paid Advertising Partner

  • Parker is a graduate of NC State University with a bachelors degree in Business Administration and has a Masters degree focusing on Integrated Marketing Communications from UNC Wilmington. His background extends from the agency world to in-house working for B2B, B2C, and e-commerce clients. When he is not working, he loves walking his dogs around Raleigh, NC where he lives or checking out the newest restaurants and breweries.

 

Liv McConnell

Content Strategy Partner

  • Liv McConnell (she/her) has spent most of the past decade leading up B2B content marketing and strategy efforts in the workplace DEI space, partnering with companies that are dedicated to building better, more inclusive futures.

    Whether the work at hand has involved developing a multi-channel marketing strategy, writing deeply researched white papers and long-form articles, optimizing content for SEO, penning sponsored content, ghostwriting newsletters, or whipping up new landing pages, Liv sees it all as an opportunity to help brands distill their voice and leverage that voice authentically and consistently.

    (To the last of these points, cut to a scene of her killing time at her college job, a BBQ restaurant, by taking a red pen to every piece of print media she could get her hands on, including menus. Consistent, grammatically pristine copy is kind of her jam.)

    When she's not writing and editing, Liv can be found antiquing, reading Shirley Jackson's short stories, trying to channel the ghost of Julia Child in the kitchen, and exploring her home of New Orleans.

 
 

 Brands we love working with

 
 

Mountain Laurel Digital provides marketing partnership with a focus on SEO, research, online brand strategy, and content initiatives for clients spanning the speciality food and beverage, retail, wellness, visual media, e-commerce, software for service, tourism, and higher education industries. Our partnerships bring clarity, guidance, awareness, and interest to our clients’ marketing efforts.

“Mountain Laurel Digital has been instrumental in helping me get my creative business off the ground. They provided me with a digital roadmap for my new business that included everything from customer personas, target keywords, content strategy and suggestions to help me make my business more valuable to the community. And business aside, she is wonderful to work with. I’m looking forward to a continued relationship with Mountain Laurel Digital. I highly recommend Mountain Laurel Digital and their services.”

— Niki Litts, Glyph Haus

“As a non tech savvy business owner, I was aware how important SEO would be for my company, but really had no idea where to start. It was clear from the get go that the amazing women at Mountain Laurel Digital were going to be a perfect fit. The market research that they conducted for us helped dial in our brand message, not only making it easier for potential customers to understand what we were about, but also making my job easier when it came to deciding what aspects of our story were most important to highlight. When I became aware that our search engine presence was not where I would expect it to be, they clearly conveyed the causes and were able to work with us to make the necessary changes making it easier for online searches to find us. From the very beginning, the Mountain Laurel Digital team was approachable, professional, and a blast to work with.”

— William Goldberg, Founder/Head Distiller, Oak and Grist Distilling Company

“Mountain Laurel Digital are some of the sweetest people I’ve had the pleasure of working with, it feels like meeting up with an old friend again. They are incredibly organized and straightforward and do a great job of explaining everything in a way that the average non seo savvy person can understand! They addressed all my concerns, was honest with me about the growth of my site, and gave me clear understanding of all my options! I can’t wait to see where this business takes them.”

— Naba Zabih, Naba Zabih Photography