Meet Kassia Binkowski of One K Creative in Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kassia Binkowski.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kassia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Nearly ten years ago, I had a Masters of Public Health, a full passport, and had traveled the world round only to move right back to my favorite little progressive town nestled against the Rocky Mountains. After briefly considering pursuing a doctorate degree and an academic career in global health, I did a gut check and jumped headfirst outside my comfort zone.

There was an opening to be the Director of Communications for a small nonprofit working in Guatemala and I had just enough experience to talk my way into the job. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to step from program design to communications design within the nonprofit sector, but I was flying by the seat of my pants learning content creation and strategy, editorial calendars and art direction. As luck would have it, social impact communications turned out to be the perfect intersection of my professional experience in social systems and my personal interest in writing and design. Fast forward nearly a decade and I’ve built a small team of creatives to tell stories for social change. Through writing, photography, filmmaking and graphic design I lead One K Creative to support social impact organizations from Colorado to Kathmandu tell their stories, engage their audiences, and grow their impact.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that working in the social impact sector – now much bigger than just non-profits – requires an appetite for adversity. Alas, so does entrepreneurship. Funding falls through, natural disasters hit, artisan production halts, budgets dry up. Not every creative idea comes to fruition, collaborations fall through, partners are hard to pin down, some seasons are harder than others.

In the past seven years, I’ve leaned heavily on my public health training to set goals, track progress, and adjust course over and over again. Applied within the context of a creative studio, that means launching products and pitching services to see what takes, modifying offerings based on client feedback, restructuring teams based on talent. And in everything we do, we stay focused on the heart of our mission – to leverage creativity to further social progress.

Please tell us about One K Creative story. What should we know?
One K Creative is a boutique creative studio telling the most pressing stories on this planet. Those things nobody wants to talk about? We’re going there. We work with clients we believe in and causes we care about, producing content that will drive audiences toward action. Through film, photography, graphic design, and writing our team of artists and storytellers collaborate with nonprofits, social enterprises, and government programs to produce content that will catalyze conversation and amplify impact. We believe in wild imagination and artistic bravery. We are professional in our approach to collaboration, passionate about our commitment to social change, and unabashedly creative in our production of the most critical stories of our time.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Coming up in global health and working now in the social impact space, I am acutely aware of the fact that I won the birth lottery. That was all luck. I was born a privileged white woman in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I have a passport that allows me across borders, a language that is understood nearly everywhere. Never have I been the victim of discrimination or abuse. Never have I known real hunger or hardship. I am so so lucky.

And also I work really hard. Telling stories on behalf of marginalized communities, creating space for the voices of individuals who don’t have a platform to be heard is not only a tremendous honor but requires constant humility. I do not know their struggles, I don’t ever presume to understand their experiences. But I role up my sleeves anyway, I listen even when I’m uncomfortable, I lean on my training and learn what I can to leverage my own talent to do justice to their stories. Our goal is to create a space for the organizations with deep expertise in social justice, to create a space for a collection of quieted voices to grow into a chorus that demands attention, that captivates audiences. I’m generally of the opinion that if I can leverage my luck and work ethic alongside the creativity of my colleagues and the expertise of my clients, maybe collectively we can move the needle.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.onekcreative.com
• Email: info@onekcreative.com
• Instagram: onekcreative
• Facebook: onekcreative

Image Credit:
One K Creative

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