Marianne Barber
Content Director
“You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis
From her first jobs churning out a book jacket a day for major publishers, through her copywriting years with New York ad agencies and a sustainability-focused start-up, Marianne has found a path into loving every ad campaign, TV spot, direct mail piece, website, corporate speech, presentation, video, annual report, newsletter and piece of collateral that’s come across her desk. Over her long career she has been lucky to work with clients such as diet Coke, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, T. Rowe Price, GE, Hubbell, Meredith Corporation, Encyclopaedia Britannica, AT&T and Polaroid (for which her B2B campaign won the Caples First Prize two years in a row) as well as nonprofits including Save the Children, Amherst Cinema, College Money Matters and 5 Steps to Thrive.
Although she can usually be found at her desk in the deep woods of Connecticut, Marianne grew up in New York City and was a Voice Major at the Fiorello H LaGuardia School of Music, Art and Performing Arts. When a teacher told her she could have a career as a backup singer, she didn’t hear the implied compliment and took it as a cue to focus on writing instead. But wouldn’t you know it, her career brought her back to her time at LaGuardia anyway: That ingrained focus on the audience—how to grab someone’s attention, tell a story and make it real—is what helps her keep excited about every assignment and each new “performance.”
A published author (The Parent’s Guide to Food Allergies/Henry Holt & Company) and highly experienced group facilitator and program developer, Marianne loves taking a complex subject and transforming it into ideas that are simple, fresh, relatable and clear.