Kelly Carnahan helps mission-driven organizations make sense of complexity — articulating what matters most and translating it into communication that’s aligned, confident, and effective. Her work blends strategy, design, and narrative, helping organizations connect mission, messaging, and business decisions for greater clarity and utility.

Her drive to improve systems started early—around age six—when she became a Fisher-Price urban planner.

On the floor of her childhood bedroom, Kelly built cities. They began with pieces from her Little People sets—the village, the A-frame, the farm, the castle—and expanded using whatever was at hand: junior encyclopedias, National Geographic kids’ books, and Nancy Drew books that became housing, commercial districts, or roadways. As new ideas emerged, the cities changed and infrastructure evolved. (It bothered her that there was a jail but no city hall, but that’s a different essay.)

In college, the publishing and communications light flickered on. Kelly recognized that the same instincts applied to language and information: how content is structured, written, and designed shapes how easily it’s understood, remembered, and used. She didn’t so much find her lane as realize she’d been in it all along.

Over the course of her career, Kelly has worked across branding, editorial, design, and strategic communications. Her work spans web, print, digital, and environmental formats, and has been implemented by organizations including Intel, Intuit, Purina, Cigna, and Indiana University. Today, she is especially skilled at helping organizations see where things have drifted and bring them back into alignment.

Part strategist, part storyteller, and part organizational therapist, Kelly is known for asking the questions others avoid. When a program, service line, or message no longer aligns with core values, she’ll gently (but firmly) ask: Does this still make sense?

Kelly holds a BFA from Marshall University (Go Herd!) and an MA in journalism from Indiana University (Go Hoosiers!). While at Marshall, she met longtime collaborator Jim Stowers, who has been her trusted editor, sounding board, and internal conscience ever since—strengthening, structuring, and sharpening her creative schemes.

She lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with her partner, Mark. She tends flower and vegetable gardens under constant siege by a deeply committed chipmunk–deer alliance, has played Scrabble weekly since 2008 with a local crew of artists, gentle vandals, and rabble-rousers, and has co-hosted a weekly Sunday Supper Club since 2020.