Earnest
As Associate Creative Director at Earnest, I lead art direction and design across brand and growth creative while managing a multidisciplinary team of designers and copywriters. I stay hands-on in the work, developing visual systems and campaigns across lifecycle, paid social, OOH, video, web, print, and more, while partnering closely with copy to shape the story.
Debt & Dating
Turning proprietary research into a cultural campaign
To help Earnest enter the broader conversation around money, we transformed proprietary research on debt and relationships into a culturally relevant campaign spanning paid and organic social, PR, web, lifecycle, and SEO.
I led art direction and design across the campaign, translating the research into a playful visual system and conversation-driven creative that made a traditionally stressful topic feel relatable and shareable.
During the campaign period, the work reached 170M+ people, drove engagement 20.3% above benchmark, and generated 390 rate checks. The research also earned organic industry attention, with competitor SoFi featuring it in both its On the Money newsletter and blog.
Canonical blog images and illustrations
Report landing page, built with Storyblok
I designed six paid social concepts that transformed Debt & Dating research into provocative, culturally relevant creative built to stop the scroll. The campaign reached 1M+ users, delivering a 5x higher CTR and 90% lower CPC than Earnest’s always-on student loan campaigns, with the cheeky “Size Doesn’t Matter” concept emerging as the standout performer.
OOH/Billboards
Testing geo-targeted awareness in Washington, DC
To test whether out-of-home advertising could drive measurable borrower activity, we launched a geo-targeted campaign across the Washington, DC market, including Hagerstown, Maryland. I led the art direction and design across the campaign, including motion executions in After Effects that used a downward-swooping graphic to visually reinforce our lower-rate messaging and create impact in transit and roadside environments.
Comparing the month before launch with the campaign’s final month, the market saw a 16.2% increase in unique site visitors, a 44.6% increase in signed agreements, and a 266.5% increase in total loan value, from $657K to $2.41M.
OTT / Connected TV
Testing story-led creative in a performance channel
To expand Earnest’s OTT creative beyond benefit-led messaging, we partnered with Ready Set on two narrative spots for Earnest Student Loans. Easy Peasy brought the brand into a relatable college-life setting, while Brunch Savvy followed an emerging professional at home, giving us two distinct approaches to more human, story-led storytelling.
I joined the project during production and led creative direction on the Earnest side through post-production, partnering closely with Ready Set to shape final edits, pacing, cutdowns, and visual details ahead of launch.
Performance evolved over time: Brunch Savvy initially drove greater signed loan volume, while Easy Peasy ultimately proved more efficient, generating more volume on roughly half the spend the following quarter and converting more efficiently throughout the funnel. The learnings helped inform our approach to hooks, pacing, and platform-specific editing for subsequent video creative.
Easy Peasy
Brunch Savvy
Personal Loan Email System Design Refresh
Creating a distinct product identity and reducing cross-sell confusion
Earnest’s personal loan emails shared much of the same visual language as student loan refinancing, creating confusion for existing customers who couldn’t always quickly distinguish which product they were being offered.
I led the art direction and design of a refreshed email system that gave personal loans a more distinct visual identity, introducing a warmer palette, more human imagery, and a flexible design language that could scale across the lifecycle. We also shifted the story beyond rates and terms toward the real reasons people borrow, from consolidating high-interest debt to funding home improvements.
We began with a key returning-borrower benefit: a 2% rate discount. Rather than presenting it as an abstract percentage, the new approach translated the benefit into tangible dollar savings and paired it with more aspirational, benefit-led creative.
Early testing showed the redesigned approach converting requested loan volume into signed loans at roughly twice the rate of the previous design across comparable audiences. The system was built to extend across additional stages of the personal-loan lifecycle.
AI-Enabled Copy Bank
Turning proven creative into a scalable content system
At Earnest, frequent lifecycle campaigns required our copywriters to repeatedly develop variations of similar messages, creating an opportunity to make the process faster without sacrificing creative quality or compliance.
I spearheaded the development of a centralized copy bank in Airtable built from high-performing lifecycle creative. Working with copy, lifecycle marketing, project management, and legal partners, we broke winning copy into reusable components and tagged each one by factors such as funnel stage, message strategy, component type, and performance signals.
We then connected the library to Claude through a custom skill and prompting framework that references the copy bank alongside our brand and writing guidelines. Lifecycle partners can now generate a strategically grounded first draft based on their testing needs, with Creative and Compliance providing focused review rather than starting each send from scratch.
The pilot has reduced development time by more than half while preserving human judgment where it matters most: strategy, originality, brand nuance, and final creative quality.
Paid Social
Building attention through platform-native creative
I led the art direction and design of paid-social creative across student lending and personal loans, using motion, culturally relevant formats, and rapid concept testing to make complex financial messages feel immediate and accessible.
The work balanced brand consistency with platform-native storytelling, adapting the visual approach to each campaign while testing new hooks, formats, and audience insights.
LinkedIn Prospecting
Testing audience specificity among high-balance graduates
Earnest launched its first LinkedIn prospecting campaign for high-balance graduates, testing four audiences across two variables: career recency and school tier.
I led the art direction and design across established professionals and recent job switchers, tailoring the visual storytelling and messaging to each audience while maintaining a cohesive campaign system. The test helped us explore how audience-specific creative could build relevance in a new prospecting channel.
Sales Enablement & Partnership Collateral
Making complex financial stories easier to share
I designed a range of sales enablement and partnership materials that helped Client Happiness teams and campus partners bring the Earnest story to life, including personalized savings recaps, testimonial resources, and partner-facing collateral.
Each piece translated complex financial information into approachable, actionable content while giving internal teams polished, on-brand resources to support borrower conversations and strengthen external partnerships.
Publishing Partnerships
Reaching high-intent borrowers through trusted publications
To reach high-intent borrowers through publications they already trusted, Earnest entered advertorial for the first time in 2026, launching print and native placements across Penn Gazette, Harbus, Stanford Magazine, UChicago Magazine, and Above the Law.
I led the art direction and design across the placements while partnering closely with our Director of Brand and Content on messaging. Each publication was supported by a dedicated landing page, trackable QR codes and UTMs, and email banners, creating a connected campaign rather than a standalone media buy.
Print placements alone generated $478K in attributed rate-check volume.
About Us Page Refresh
Turning a brand page into a measurable growth channel
I led a full design and copy refresh of Earnest’s About Us page, introducing the company’s new mission, replacing outdated scholarship messaging with the current product portfolio, and updating leadership photography.
The goal was to make the page a clearer expression of who Earnest is today while strengthening the credibility and information prospective borrowers need before taking action.
Within six weeks, the refreshed page drove 24 rate checks, generated more than $678K in rate-check volume, and contributed to its first signed loan. It also began receiving traffic from ChatGPT, showing how a traditionally brand-focused page could influence conversion as consumers increasingly discover companies through AI tools.
A Little Earnest, Off the Clock
Temporary tattoos for the company off-site
For our company offsite, I designed a set of custom temporary tattoos inspired by the business terms we hear in our sleep, from “my WAC” to “splash & float.” A fun excuse to take Earnest’s illustration style somewhere a little less expected.
