Year
2022-2026
Industry
Non-Profit Parks & Recreation
Introduction
One regional park authority. Six local jurisdictions. Twenty-three distinct operating segments. One cohesive brand.
NOVA Parks is a 12,000+ non-profit acre regional park system with 37 park properties, spanning six jurisdictions of Northern Virginia: Loudoun County, Fairfax County, Arlington County, City of Fairfax, City of Falls Church, and City of Alexandria. During my time there, I helped shape how the organization looked, sounded, and communicated across an unusually broad collection of audiences, properties, and experiences. My work lived somewhere between brand strategy and creative execution: developing identities, building systems that helped teams work more efficiently, translating complex information for leadership executives and board members, and turning individual campaigns and experiences into cohesive brand worlds.
Brand Development & Identity
Building brand identities for 23 experiences within one park system.
NOVA Parks offers everything from children's camps and waterparks to golf courses, weddings, campground and cabin rentals, a cafe and catering company, educational programming, and seasonal events. Each experience needed a personality of its own, but each still needed to feel unmistakably part of the larger NOVA Parks family. I developed and refined brand identities, visual languages, and messaging frameworks across 23 sub-brands, balancing audience expectations, revenue goals, and organizational standards to create identities that could actually work in the real world.
Templates & Creative Systems
A brand is only as strong as the systems that support it.
At NOVA Parks, I translated brand strategy into practical tools that could be used by designers, marketers, operations teams, vendors, and other staff across the organization. I developed visual standards, branded templates, self-service resources, SOPs, and training materials that made good design easier to produce, and easier to scale. The goal wasn't simply consistency. It was to create a creative system that people could actually use.
Making Information Matter
Turning complex information into clear, compelling communications for leadership.
Not every communication starts with a blank canvas. Sometimes it starts with a spreadsheet, a financial report, a complicated analysis, or a room full of information that needs to make sense quickly.
At NOVA Parks, I translated complex data, organizational information, and analysis into executive-level presentations, reports, slide decks, and visual communications designed to help leadership understand the story behind the numbers.
My role wasn't simply to make the information look polished. It was to determine what mattered, establish hierarchy, and turn complexity into something people could understand and act on.