If you haven’t gathered from our previous blogs, Aria is an office of food fanatics. Many of us whip up epic creations for our Wednesday breakfasts and monthly happy hours, and we often convene over lunch from one of our go-to restaurants and discuss everything from healthcare IT to PR to life in the Boston area.

When we re-launched Aria Marketing four years ago, the leadership team had a unique opportunity to rebuild the company and its culture. We looked back at the previous fifteen years and reflected on what was working and where there was opportunity for improvement. We kept some stuff, ditched some other stuff, and tried some new stuff. For this blog post, I wanted to share some of the initiatives we undertook that garnered the most and quickest positive responses from staff.

Here at Aria, we work hard to achieve great results for our clients, but we also love to blow off steam as a team. Every quarter, our Fun Committee is in charge of putting on a big event for the team to kick back, relax and have a great time. This time around, we wanted to try something a little different. Not only did we want to host an enjoyable event, but we wanted to create something special for the office. And what better place to do that than at Paint Bar!

I have always been very passionate about the environment, sparked from my early days helping my dad sort our recycling and reaffirmed by studying political ecology and environmentalism, volunteering on organic farms, and continually researching and practicing ways to live a more sustainable life. At Aria, I have earned the role as our resident sustainability expert and am known for things like avoiding plastic, not wasting food, and reusing salsa jars as Tupperware.

When we’re not busy scoring homeruns for our clients, the Aria team enjoys getting out of the office for some quality company fun. The most recent Aria adventure was a trip to historic Fenway Park to see the Red Sox dominate the Miami Marlins (I’ll get to the score a little bit later).

This spring, Aria had the pleasure of having two interns support the public relations team. Both Gaby and Alex worked directly with Aria account executives on a range of activities, including media monitoring, media research and social media support. Before their internship programs come to an end, we sat down with the colleague students and talked to them about their semester at Aria. Following is Gaby’s summary of her experience at Aria:

At Aria, we provide each of our clients with a dedicated PR team that typically consists of a Vice President, a Senior Account Executive, an Account Executive (AE) and sometimes an Account Coordinator (AC). Given this set team structure, AEs and ACs typically do not have many opportunities to collaborate directly with each other on client work.

The Aria team took a break (mostly) from the world of health IT PR for a full two weeks this holiday season. After a year of hard work, a crazy pandemic, and a transition to WFH, we took some well-deserved time to relax. Read about the team’s much needed R&R over the holidays:

The summer is coming to a close and with it, so are our Summer Fridays. For those of you who are new around here, everyone on the team gets every other Friday off throughout July and August to take a break from health IT PR and enjoy a little extra vacationing during the hottest months of the year.

While the pandemic kept us from reliving some of the more spectacular moments of our 2019 Summer Fridays, the Aria Marketing team took the extra three-day weekends to reflect, reflex, and recharge. Browse the bright spots of our team’s Summer Friday retreats for inspiration on what to do during the last few weekends of summer (The last day of summer isn’t officially until September 22!):

Meet the newest member of the Aria team, Account Coordinator, Serena Bronda. In getting to know Serena, we’ve learned that she has lived in some amazing places. So, I thought this blog post would be a great excuse to find out a bit more about her experiences around the world.

Every day our primary focus is on getting the best possible PR results and opportunities for our clients; but we make sure to build in various perks, special events, and other activities to help us reach the “Triple Aim of Aria” – increased productivity, improved health and wellness, and reduced stress levels.

One of the greatest benefits about transitioning to a virtual workforce is having the ability to access a talent pool far beyond Massachusetts (where our office was formerly located). At Aria, our healthcare public relations team is quickly taking advantage of this, welcoming employees from outside the Greater Boston area, like our newest Senior Account Executive, Karina Stabile, who joins us from Long Island, New York. I had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Karina to find out a bit more about her. Teaser: when Karina isn’t writing pitches, creating thought leadership agendas, or developing media strategies, she’s busy training for marathons or enjoying a Broadway show. Read on to learn more about Karina.

The arrival of a new team member brought some much-needed change and excitement to the Aria “office” as we kicked off 2021 and inched closer to the year anniversary of our transition to working from home. Our new Account Coordinator, Emily Wisner, has quickly become a vital member of the Aria family, and our first ever to onboard remotely. We are looking forward to eventually meeting Emily face-to-face (hopefully over drinks at an office happy hour!), but for now, I virtually sat down with Emily to learn a little more about the newest member of our team.

Despite the pandemic, Aria has realized steady growth in terms of adding new healthcare clients to its portfolio and making several new hires. Account Executive Casey Bennett joined Aria’s public relations team in March, and I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Casey to learn a bit more about her.

It’s hard to believe it has been more than six months since Aria Marketing became a fully remote agency. Though there have been some bumps in the road, the transition has gone surprisingly well and has actually helped us to grow as an agency. We are now able to hire public relations all-stars from across the country. One such all-star is our newest employee, Account Coordinator Haley Collins. I had the pleasure of virtually catching up with Haley to get to know her a little better and to find out how she likes to spend her time when she is not securing coverage for our healthcare IT clients. Read on to learn more!

The Aria team has been working remotely since March of 2020. Of course, this transition came with initial challenges but we are fortunate to be in a profession where we can secure results for our health IT clients from anywhere with a WiFi connection. Despite the tumultuous nature of past year, it has been one of steady growth for Aria, and we are excited that we were able to welcome many new faces to the team!

Maddi Larsen, account coordinator and trivia superstar, joined Aria at the beginning of 2021. I had the pleasure of catching up with her to discuss quarantine hobbies, her background, and why she moved across the country to Boston:

If there’s one thing my colleagues at Aria know about me, it’s that I love tea.

At Aria, I bring in a “tea of the week” to share the power of tea. Each tea has a story and strikes a different, unique chord. It warms the soul and evokes many of my fondest memories.

This week, I brought in Moroccan Mint tea, a special one for me because of my Tunisian heritage.  Having lived our lives mostly in France and the U.S., my sister and I had trouble connecting with our Muslim family. Drinking traditional sweet mint tea and looking out over the shore together was our way of overcoming that cultural and language barrier. The tea still reminds me of the Mediterranean breeze and the taste of the sickly-sweet Tunisian candies our aunts pushed into our hands.

As Boston’s cold winter approaches, we’re offering a particularly warm welcome to Aria’s newest team member and North Carolinian, Madeleine Smith. Madeleine just joined the team in October as an account coordinator at Aria. During her first week, I sat down with Madeleine to learn about her passions, favorite music, and even her next hair style.  Read on to learn more!  

While we are fully embracing the start of 2022, we did want to take a moment to look back on our fourth quarter of 2021, as we were able to close out a wild year with some top-notch results for our clients.

Read on for some of our favorite highlights from this past quarter:

Welcoming in a new year is an excellent time to think about what went well, what didn't, and what we can do to improve the next 12 months. Similarly to how we strategize to be more impactful with our healthcare IT work, we use the new year to strategize and come up with new ways to maximize our own health and wellness. A few years ago, we had the idea to close our offices the week between Christmas and New Year’s; a perk for which we are all still very grateful.