Creatis Partner Spotlight: 
Allied Executives 

Strong Community Equals Business Growth & Success

Unfortunately, there’s no encyclopedia or tell-all secret about running a successful business; no magic lamp that will turn you into an overnight entrepreneurial success. And while there are hundreds of books published each year claiming to possess all the answers (and some of them do offer help), no one-size-fits-all resource alone can make business owners and leaders successful. What can help fill in the gaps and promote sustainable growth? The short answer: Community.

Community is what drives and ignites Allied Executive’s passion for uniting business leaders/owners local to the Twin Cities. Allied provides a unique opportunity for small to midsize business executives to form lasting relationships through carefully constructed peer groups, small and large group education events, one-on-one coaching, and social networking opportunities for members. As President Kurt Theriault puts it, Allied helps “business leaders get off their islands.” The peer groups that Allied offers through memberships are, at their core, about leverage; the leveraging of networks, experience and one another’s expertise as a winning strategy to eliminate blind spots. “Look, we’re all trying to get somewhere,” says Kurt. “[Allied Executives] helps shorten the time-frame to success.”

The key for Kurt and the Allied Execs team is to place the right leaders in the right peer groups, not unlike the way Creatis finds the best resource fit for our clients.
Finding the right fit means doing your homework, no matter who your client or customer is. Allied follows a formal process to match up executives with others at their
level, for example: finding veteran leaders who run mature businesses of a similar market value and grouping those folks together. This helps business leaders/owners most effectively grow together. Kurt returns to a nautical metaphor to best explain, “We’re always thinking [in terms of] who can we get into the same boat?” 
(Pictured, above ight: Kurt Theriault, President, Allied Executives) 

How Allied Impacts Creatis 

Allied Executives also has a hand in the success and growth of Creatis.
President/CEO Kathy Hollenhorst has been a member of Allied Executives since 2017.
The partnership has helped her navigate challenges and find growth. Kathy joined two years into her role at Creatis. On why she
joined, Kathy says, “I knew
I needed a peer group environment and experts who could teach me how to be an entrepreneur…and help move [Creatis] forward.” Kathy felt that Kurt and his team truly cared about her needs and added value to the work she did, providing diverse perspectives. Kathy credits Allied for helping define new business development and sales strategies to help Creatis meet its goals these past two years. 

Because these peer groups are like living, breathing organisms the best members are the ones who really “lean in” and do all they can to contribute for the benefit of themselves and others. People who are in it for the long-haul. Kathy fit all those characteristics for Kurt. That’s what Creatis prizes in its leaders and employees, too. Allied’s criteria for membership closely aligns with the Creatis core values, which espouse carrying a pay-it-forward mentality practiced throughout one’s career. Kurt says Kathy is, “always leaning in to learn, grow...quick to shun the status quo. She’s a giver and not a taker [in that] she values others’ experiences and understands she’s not a finished product.” 

Kurt takes partial credit for Kathy’s newfound passion for podcasts as a vehicle to provide expert thought leadership content to an extended audience in the marketing industry. Kurt had Kathy as a guest on Allied’s “Lessons Learned Along the Way” video podcast, where Kathy conveyed lessons she’s learned as a business leader. Watch it here. 

Are you a business leader/owner? Learn more about Allied Executives Membership. 

(Pictured, above: Kurt Theriault & Kathy Hollenhorst at Creatis )   

Client Spotlight: Northwestern Health Sciences University

Transforming Health Care

Alternative health care is advancing the types of health care available to patients, and changing the way patients are treated. 
It's a people-focused wellness mission that looks beyond symptoms with an open-mind and a united purpose.

At the heart of this united purpose is the premier alternative care leader in the Twin Cities: Northwestern Health Sciences University.

For over 70 years, Northwestern Health Sciences University (formerly Northwestern College of Chiropractic) has been leading the charge on alternative health care education, patient-centered care and medical research. 

Their mission is to prepare students to become leaders who will deliver and advance health care in their communities for generations to come. 

Accredited programs Northwestern offers to students include: Oriental Medicine, Chiropractic, Applied Clinical Nutrition, Massage Therapy, Undergraduate Health Services and more! 

Along with giving the best education and training to their students, Northwestern is constantly creating new ways to provide integrative care in the community. For example, they offer "pop-up" health clinics at client sites around the Twin Cities and collaborate with Abbott Northwestern Hospital for specialized care programs.

Creatis & Northwestern Health Sciences University

As Northwestern's serivces and enrollment have continued to grow, so has their need for marketing help! 

In Spring of 2018, Creatis was there to provide help with an onsite resource who joined the Northwestern marketing team to help complete an email campaign. That employee did such a stellar job that it opened to door for our partnership to grow. Since Northwestern doesn't operate with a traditional marketing/creative team, but does have a variety of complex projects to complete, they've utilized our staffing services, which means Creatis employees working as part of their team. We source the very best individuals for their marketing needs - both in terms of skills and personality.

We greatly value the partnership we have with Creatis.  The staffing team consistently sources outstanding candidates and the individuals contracted do an exceptional job.  They are professional, knowledgeable and extremely talented, bringing us strong expertise in multiple marketing areas.  We couldn’t be more pleased. - Kathy Hagens, VP of Marketing, Northwestern Health Services University

Over the past 9 months, Creatis has helped Northwestern's marketing by providing top-notch designers, marketing planners, and copy writers to augment their current team. Through Creatis' services, Northwestern has been able to drive enrollment efforts, and complete writing and digital projects - and do so quickly and on-budget!  

Not only have our employees been fantastic at supporting Northwestern, but they love working there, too! They feel it's an open, creative environment where good ideas are valued and hard work is prioritized - the perfect combination for Creatis employees. 

As Northwestern continues their pursuit of excellence and the advancement of alternative health care, we look forward to how our two organizations can collaborate to quickly turn problems into solutions.

Partner Spotlight: Marketers That Matter®

24 Seven Talent — one of the nation’s largest, privately-held digital marketing and creative staffing and recruiting firms — has acquired Creatis. Among many industry advantages, joining the 24 Seven family means Creatis now has access to Marketers That Matter®, a leading community of top marketing executives and innovative companies created by The Sage Group in partnership with The Wall Street Journal.

Marketers That Matter (MTM) creates space for bold, new ideas by bringing together marketing standard-bearers through members-only events and insights. Creatis is thrilled to be able to leverage in this groundbreaking community, and to leverage its benefits for our network.

Marketing needs to connect to the hearts and minds of consumers, so it makes sense that any bold, new ideas be bounced around in a shared space by the true heart of a business: the marketers. MTM centers on this aspect of “coming together” and does so by giving members exclusive access to learn from and connect to those at the forefront of the industry. Summits, forums, and virtual events are among the exclusive opportunities.

The MTM ethos is direct: It is important, if not critical, that marketers learn from each other; those who are in the field practicing the discipline. And it’s never been a better time to be a marketer that matters in today’s ever-evolving marketing landscape.
Corporate MTM members are top marketing executives from the world’s most innovative companies including Google, Oracle, Peloton, Sephora, Atlassian, Uber, Asana, TikTok, Visa, Old Navy, Intuit, Yelp and many others.

The best part of this new partnership between Creatis and MTM? Your organization now has the opportunity to join this transformative community. Marketers That Matter membership is limited to 75 companies and there are currently 2 openings available to Creatis client partners.

If you’re interested in learning more or wondering if your company qualifies for membership, please reach out to Creatis President & Managing Director Kathy Hollenhorst at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Learn more about The Sage Group here.

Visit the Marketers That Matter website.

Leadership Spotlight: McKaela Baldus

McKaela Baldus has started as the new General Manager/Director for the Creatis | 24 Seven Minnesota region. In this new role, McKaela will oversee the Staffing division for Creatis and integrate operations with the other 24 Seven offices across the U.S., Canada and the UK. McKaela returns to Creatis following a Practice Leadership role at SkyWater Search Partners.

While managing our Staffing division throughout most of the 2010s, McKaela’s leadership was instrumental to the success of Creatis Staffing, under which we saw multi-million dollar growth. Her connections, dedication and acumen expanded our business with UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare, Cargill and HealthPartners. Growing in our partnership with these clients will remain a key priority for Creatis and the greater 24 Seven team as we move forward. "With the acquisition by 24 Seven, Creatis now has tools and resources to better serve our clients and employees which will allow us to grow and serve our partners more efficiently,” McKaela said.

McKaela has true expertise within staffing, recruiting, and marketing. Her strengths include relationship building and management, strategic account development, and a near-encyclopedic knowledge of recruiting; from contracts to permanent placement, and candidates to clients. She understands the lifecycle of the industry and how Creatis can add value to our clients through contracting. She noted, “Studies show, the need for contractors across industries will only continue to grow in this gig economy.”

McKaela will bring a renewed strategic vision to the Staffing arm of Creatis, just as we're expanding our offerings to more clients and employees under 24 Seven's umbrella of support. The Staffing team, which includes Relationship Managers Julie Mattson & Rhonda Palmer and Account Management Associate Ema Adams, will report directly to McKaela, as will additional Creatis team members.

Your Creatis team remains ready to help you get even more work done as a 24 Seven company.  

Connect with McKaela at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or our Business Development Director, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., to learn more about our services.

Learn more about 24 Seven Talent. 

Employee Spotlight: Amber Sullivan 

Creatis is in the business of making matches for our clients, but we wouldn’t be ‘walking the talk’ if we didn’t find the right matches for our home office team as well. We believe wholeheartedly in finding the “right person for the right seat.”

And it’s hard to imagine a better fit for both her position - and Creatis - than Amber Sullivan.

Amber is our HR/Operations Specialist - a title which encompasses so many different day-to-day functions, it’d make your head spin. But one of Amber’s many strengths is keeping things organized and on-track. You likely won’t find a kinder, more welcoming person to keep all of these things in line.

She joined Creatis in June 2017, after working 10 years leading a small, retail company. Over those 10 years, Amber learned how to keep a small business up and running - she handled human resources, financials, operations, and office management. She and her husband were also raising two kids, and her work/life balance at the company was becoming too difficult to manage. She was ready for a new challenge that allowed her to have time for her family and work.

When interviewing with Creatis, Amber had a hunch it would be something special.
“The way I was interviewed by the Creatis staff impressed me,” she said. “I got the impression they had it together. They asked good, tough questions, were transparent and allowed me to be myself.”

Amber’s impact on Creatis has not gone unnoticed. She makes contacts with our clients, employees and internal team everyday, so she’s a prominent figure in the company. Her expertise on all things HR/Operations, including billing, payroll, new hire orientation, and process improvement makes her critical to our quarterly - and ultimately, annual - growth. Add up all that expertise/skill with her positive, proactive attitude and you’ve got an award winning employee.

In 2018, Amber was selected for our Core Value Award, “Be Excellent.” Though she truly embodies all of our values, we thought excellence was the most appropriate for her contribution over the past year. She’s made us a better company, and we’re proud to have her on the team.

Partner Spotlight: UpTurnships

Change is in the Community

Renewed calls for diversity, inclusivity and economic equity are sweeping across the U.S. and impacting business for the better. In 2020, many business leaders and companies finally responded to the challenges faced by BIPOC individuals; more companies addressed shortcomings, engaged in overdue conversations, and took greater steps to help close the racial equity gap in the workplace.

While Black and minority-owned businesses experienced a surge in demand and donations for some nonprofits spiked, lasting change must come with consistency at the community level. If we’re going to create a more equitable workplace for the next generation, we’ve got to focus on exactly that: the next generation. One way to do this is to help open professional doors for students and young people from underrepresented communities who wouldn’t otherwise be given a fair shot.

UpTurn in Equity

UpTurnships is contributing to this paradigm shift in the Twin-Cities community. Formed in 2014, under the leadership of founder and former executive director Julie Burrows, UpTurnships was started to ensure that all college students in our community have equal access to paid internships, job training and one-on-one coaching—thus preparing them for meaningful career paths and greater future earning potential. This is an organic and meaningful way to close the hiring gap.

UpTurnships focuses on supporting students who are primarily responsible for their own tuition costs, are from under-represented demographic groups in business-related careers, or perhaps speak English as their second language. The small but mighty UpTurnships team works to connect motivated “UpTurns” to employers around the Twin-Cities, matching UpTurns with high-quality internships that fit their skills and interests—while providing additional support services.

La Tasha Shevlin is the new executive director at UpTurnships, and she is embracing the legacy started by Julie Burrows, leading this successful organization into new and innovative ways to provide career opportunities to UpTurns and foster connections with local employers. La Tasha knows that career development and employment are a necessity for communities and individuals to thrive. To date, UpTurnships has helped over 150 “UpTurns,” 82% of whom landed full-time work after graduation in their chosen field.

“Thank you for all you’re doing for our creative. What gifts of skill and ideas and creativity [Creatis] is bringing to UpTurnships. I cannot thank you enough!” — Julie Burrows, Founder and Board Member

Creatis Cares Program Support

The Creatis Cares program exists to be of service in the community in which we do business. We love to leverage our marketing resources to assist local non-profits, particularly to those like UpTurnships which are working toward workplace equality and providing job opportunities to the next generation. 

UpTurnships was selected as the 2020 Creatis Cares Honoree in an open voting process. As part of this program, Creatis is donating 50 hours of in-kind creative services to their organization. We find that many nonprofits need and desire help bolstering their creative and marketing efforts to get more things done — especially with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re partnering with UpTurnships to help refresh their website design, utilizing one of the skilled digital designers in our Creatis Studio, Joshua Copeland. Working with UpTurnships has been a rewarding experience for Joshua and the entire Creatis team, and partnering with Anja Silvers, Communications Specialist at UpTurnships, has been seamless.  Anja actually went through the program as an UpTurn, before later landing a full-time role on the team and making an immediate impact. That's a fact that really reinforces that the vision of this organization is being carried out in meaningful ways. 

“I wanted to express my sincere gratitude to Creatis! We are so honored to be the recipient of such a meaningful gift of time, resources, and talent! Please know that your gift is greatly appreciated and could not have come at a better time as we look ahead to make continuous improvements.” - La Tasha Shevlin, Executive Director

If you are in need of in-kind creative services, please contact Creatis President/CEO Kathy Hollenhorst at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

We’d love to connect and start a conversation with your organization.

Partner Spotlight: 24 Seven™ Talent

In Good Company with Great Companies

Creatis has joined the 24 Seven™ family of companies, which includes The Sage Group and Marketers That Matter®. It’s the kind of expansion that marketing service and staffing firms dream about—entering a group of profitable, growing, and values-driven businesses working to connect brands and agencies with top creative and marketing talent.

24 Seven is one of the nation’s largest digital marketing and creative staffing firms with many locations across the United States, in Toronto and in London. Creatis offers a new and desirable market for 24 Seven in the Midwest/Twin Cities metro area.

As a strategic resource for talent management, 24 Seven helps creatively driven global brands identify, recruit and secure top freelance and full-time talent. Those in our network will immediately see parallels to what Creatis does: the Twin Cities’ go-to resource for helping digital, creative, marketing and communications teams get more work done.

Deeper Talent, Greater Resources

This expansion into 24 Seven gives Creatis a broader reach and expanded services. Access to a deeper and more diverse national talent pool is now at our fingertips, allowing our staffing team to connect with a greater number of qualified candidates to find the best-fit for jobs, creating more value for our client partners in the process. Another value-add of joining 24 Seven is full-time/direct placement services, something Creatis did not offer previously.

The Creatis Studio has long been a key differentiator for Creatis in the Twin Cities — providing quick-turn, project execution for clients. This access to ready-to-go creative professionals is highly valued by our clients, who use us to cover peak times, handle last minute projects, or as their ongoing ‘execution partner’. Through 24 Seven’s extended network, we’ll be able to market our Studio’s unique, on-demand services at a national or even global scale; an incredible growth opportunity which will allow the Studio to serve businesses in other markets and expand our team of digital specialists, designers, copywriters, and proofreaders.

Benefits to our employees include robust upskill training resources, expanded opportunities to work at destination companies and a more diverse network to rely upon. In a previous article, we explored the incredible opportunity for our client partners to engage with Marketers That Matter, a leading community of top marketing executives and innovative companies created by The Sage Group in partnership with The Wall Street Journal.

One for All

Creatis will help the 24 Seven family create a more robust global powerhouse in digital, marketing, and creative recruiting; one that’s rooted in a like-minded approach to service, excellence and doing what’s right for all. We’re excited to add our industry and regional expertise to deliver top performers that help more clients achieve business goals.

Your Creatis team remains ready to help you get even more work done as a 24 Seven company. Connect with our Business Development Director, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., to learn more about our services.

Learn more about 24 Seven Talent. 

Financial Planning? Make it Simple. 

Wealth Enhancement Group (WEG) is driven to make life simpler for its clients. They do so by taking the headache out of financial decisions and retirement planning with comprehensive wealth management services for individuals, families, and businesses. WEG practices a unique team-based approach to wealth management. A prominent headline on the company website notes, “All the specialists you need. All in one place.” WEG believes that a team of advisors and specialists working together on a customer's behalf can offer better financial solutions than any single individual. This team-based model simply works – on average, WEG has a 97% client retention rate.

WEG guides customers through their patented 3-step process called UniFi™. As part of this process, they deploy a Roundtable™ team of investment professionals who come together to deliver and integrate strategies into the customer’s overarching financial plan. The team looks at a customer’s financial life from every angle, including core areas like financial planning, retirement income planning, tax strategies, estate planning and insurance.

Creatis & Wealth Enhancement Group

Making the financial lives of your customers simpler isn't always easy. The WEG team needs access to high-quality, up-to-date resources and marketing materials to continue delivering trusted financial peace of mind. In May of this year, Creatis started making life simpler for Wealth Enhancement Group by delivering marketing and communications solutions through our off-site Creatis Studio.

The Creatis Studio’s approach to service is much like WEG's team-based model. We deliver high-quality, turnkey solutions to our clients by leveraging an at-the-ready team of experts and specialists who include designers, production artists, PowerPoint experts, and proofreaders. We also assign a dedicated account manager to each of our clients, ensuring we can deliver quality work right when it’s needed.

All our WEG support starts and ends with Creatis Project/Account Manager Halli Schraufnagel. Halli has worked with the WEG team since starting at Creatis in May, acting as an extension of their marketing team. She has real-time digital access to WEG’s project management system and understands the workflow as if she’s a member of the team. This seamless integration allows Halli to funnel all collateral design and production projects to our designers and production artists who are already trained on the brand. “Anything [WEG] needs touched in a design manner and any digital or print collateral that needs to be updated...the Creatis Studio team gets it done,” says Halli.

Service Highlights: 

• Extend WEG’s internal marketing team by project managing marketing design and production needs
• Creatis designers are fully trained on WEG brand guidelines with real-time digital access to needed content while working remotely
• Manage daily design and production projects, including emails, event invitations, digital collateral, print communications materials, PowerPoints, and more.

Our expert team is ready to help take work off your plate. Reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to start the conversation.

Download the overview of our Creatis Studio Services here.