Entrepreneurs start businesses, not brands. The people behind brands have powerful visions for how the people they impact and society as a whole can move forward. We're here to make your vision a reality through sustainable success to realize more good in to the world.
Brllnt is collaborative network of creative leaders who run their own practices and team up to take on some of the biggest challenges facing our world today. We believe we are better together, and are able to scale to fit most budgets and goals with our decentralized operating model.
read blogMel is the CEO and Founder of Brllnt with over a decade of experience leading business development and consulting on strategies for clients including the ACLU, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, the George Washington University, and Asurity.
Mel founded Brllnt in 2014 on the belief that collaborative design has the power to build dreams and create solutions to our world’s biggest problems. Prior to leading Brllnt, Mel spent the early part of her career learning design and creative strategy from some of the world’s top creatives at Weber Shandwick and Erwin Pendland, where she served large brands including the Kellogg Foundation, BAE Systems, NATO, UN, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US Army. Mel served on AIGA-DC’s Board of Directors as Mentoring Chair from 2018 - 2020.
For nearly a decade, she has been leading design teams, and she was recognized as a DC FemTech Powerful Woman Designer in 2016. In 2015, Mel co-founded Unleaded, a monthly design thinking MeetUp and passion project with the goal of connecting DC’s design community through creative problem-solving.
Behind all the jargon we use to describe what we do (“businesses,” “brands,” “customers,” followers,” and “target audiences”) are human beings with hopes, needs, and goals. We take a values-based approach to developing brand strategies that deepen the connection between the humans who make the business and the humans who need your products and services.
Two-thirds of customers buy based on beliefs and stop supporting a business that doesn’t align with their values. Over half believe brands can do more to solve social ills than the government. Brands are the new bands. The unique voice for what we collectively believe in. Algorithms don’t dictate that. People do.
We believe design can change the world and have built solutions that are already doing so.
Our next big goal as an agency: implement smart contracts that add transparency to design scopes, and protect creatives and clients, equally.
