Kelly Carnahan helps mission-driven organizations make sense of complexity — articulating what matters most and translating it into strategy and communication that are aligned, confident, and useful.

She spent more than two decades building a career of design, publishing, branding, marketing, communications, user experience, and organizational leadership — most of it at Indiana University. There, she ultimately served as Executive Director of Marketing for the IU Alumni Association and as an advancement marketing leader at IU Foundation.

In those roles, she oversaw marketing strategy, content, advertising, digital experience, research, membership marketing, and publications including Indiana University Alumni Magazine. Earlier in her career, Kelly designed for organizations including Intel, Intuit, Purina, and Cigna through agency and employer partnerships.

Then, in early 2024, a portal opened.

Kelly was transported rather abruptly out of the professional world she had known for so long and into the strange new dimension of entrepreneurship.

The scenery was familiar — meetings, deadlines, clients, budgets, email — but the rules were different.

She has been learning the terrain ever since. Turns out, it suits her.

Today, Kelly is managing partner of Write Design Group, helping organizations figure out what is working, what has drifted, and what needs to come back into alignment. Her work blends strategy, assessment, facilitation, messaging, and design, helping clients connect what they believe, what they do, what they say, and what others actually experience.

Part strategist, part storyteller, and part organizational therapist, Kelly is known for asking the questions others may be avoiding. When a program, message, process, or longstanding practice no longer fits the organization around it, she’ll gently — but firmly — ask: Does this still make sense?

The new dimension has brought a few other discoveries too. Kelly has learned that people apparently garden, make art, crochet, cook for no particular reason, binge-watch cozy murder mysteries and sci-fi, and occasionally leave their computers while the sun is still out. She has been assured these activities existed in the old world as well.

Kelly is a native West Virginian. She holds a BFA in graphic design from Marshall University (Go Herd!) and an MA in journalism from Indiana University. She also completed executive education in design thinking through Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and digital marketing strategy through Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

At Marshall, she met Jim Stowers, now her business partner at Write Design Group and her longtime editor, collaborator, sounding board, and internal conscience. Some relationships, apparently, survive interdimensional travel.

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