With Thanksgiving right around the corner, gratitude is on all our minds. One thing the Aria team is thankful for this year is our newest Account Coordinator, Devyn Andrews, who joined the team in October. In order to get to know Devyn, I sat down with her to learn about her hobbies, passions, and her experience in the healthcare industry. Read on to learn more!

Every now and then, our VP, Ross Homer, brings up a quirky fact about himself or an interesting story from his past. So, the team thought it would be fun to base a blog post on this. In that spirit, we bring you the top ten list of curious facts about Ross (in no particular order):

I can – and do – tell people all the time that Aria is a truly amazing, special and rewarding place to work. But, for those who are skeptical or think I am biased, get this: two of our star employees, VP Ross Homer and senior account executive Kristen Berry, both left Aria several years ago to pursue other opportunities and missed us so much that they came back (and have promised to never leave again)!

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.

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.

Our team continues to expand, and now it is time to introduce our three newest Aria recruits. I learned a lot about them, from their favorite ice cream flavor, to what their favorite place in the world is! Now it is my pleasure to introduce Erica Navar (Account Executive), Julia Dakhlia (Account Coordinator) and Caroline Dragonetti (Intern).

Top Tips for Designing a PR Agency Office Space

It seems like just yesterday that I was spending my days sorting through paint swatches and rug samples and testing out the latest ergonomically-designed desk chair (in addition to writing press releases, of course). But in fact, this month marks the third anniversary of our big move to a new office space located in an old mill in Newton’s Nonantum neighborhood. And, even more significantly, it marks three years since we officially became “the New Aria.”

As we all (should) know, social media is a valuable, even essential, tool for connecting businesses with a wider audience. At Aria Marketing, in addition to our public relations work, we lead social media programs for our healthcare clients, developing organic and paid content to boost sales and increase their digital reach. Through social media channels, our clients can share relevant news stories, promote recent coverage, and connect with other industry leaders. But, creating great social media content can only go so far; engagement from employees and a broader audience is needed to propel the content, and company, forward.

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.

Like many college grads and young professionals who entered the workforce during the pandemic, my first glimpse of Aria Marketing was through a Zoom meeting. However, even though I joined the company as a virtual employee, I immediately knew that it was the right fit for me— so much so that I referred my roommate to also apply to this healthcare public relations agency. I’m happy to say that Elizabeth Coleman, my former Boston University classmate, joined Aria last April as a fellow account coordinator. To introduce Elizabeth to the broader Aria community, I sat down and interviewed her over coffee (in our living room/office) last week.

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.

Our team at Aria is growing like weeds this summer! For this blog post, I got to know our newest account coordinator, Danielle Adams, and account executive, Kara McCrudden, and found out some of their big life goals, dreams, and favorite things (including their mutual love of defunct bands from the early-2000’s, and Harry Potter).

If you follow us on social media, you know that at Aria, we love to celebrate any and all major milestones. Well, we recently celebrated an old one… oops, I mean “a big one,” as our President, Scott Collins, just hit the big 5-0! In honor of Scott’s birthday, we asked him to share some little known facts about himself:

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.

I am very excited to introduce our “Pitch” followers to one of Aria’s newest employees, Lindsey Honig. Lindsey was hired as an Account Executive, and she will be responsible for things like managing speakers’ bureaus and awards programs, running social media initiatives, and executing media relations strategies. Now that Lindsey has survived her first couple of weeks at Aria (and, says she wants to stay!), I thought it would be a good time to sit down with her and get to know her a little bit better. Since she has already sat through enough Aria interviews, I figured a one-minute ‘speed dating’-type interview, a la Watch What Happens Live, would be fun. Here we go!

As the world begins to “return to normal,” there are some innovations, processes and habits we picked up during the COVID-19 lockdown that actually weren’t so bad – in fact, there are a few COVID adaptations I think we should keep.

We are excited to welcome Olga Frech, our new Account Executive, to the Aria family.  Not only is Olga our newest addition, but she has also traveled the farthest to be here.  Born and raised in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Olga came to the U.S. to continue her education and begin her career. We thought we’d use our new blog as an excuse to find out a little more about Olga, why she came, and how she likes the U.S.

I started working at Aria Marketing just over a month ago, and one of the first things that impressed me about the company is that there are so many people who have become “Aria lifers” (Scott, Jessica, Ross, Nancy, Chanel and Katie). So, I set out to find out what keeps people at this PR agency. Is it the #BreakfastWednesdays (a habit hard to break, once you get used to it), the diversity that each one of Aria’s clients brings to the table, the continuously evolving and exciting field of healthcare, the energetic and passionate  team, or Aria’s monthly #HappyHour event? To get to the bottom of the “Aria lifer” trend, I decided to go right to the source(s). Here’s what they had to say: