We’re a tight knit group of clever and creative marketing professionals working in inspiring locations across North America.
Principal + Creative Director
Danielle Kristmanson
With strategic insights into consumer engagement, Danielle’s creative leadership and bold innovation bring clients’ dreams to life. Her big picture capabilities for brand development have made her a sought-after speaker with a client list that reads like the who’s who of outdoor sports. She's as confident leading a meeting with top level execs as she is navigating waist deep pow through gladed terrain on her board. A mother of two all-star athlete daughters, Danielle’s on the move as often as she’s making moves.
One of the mountain sport industry’s top marketing strategists, MJ steers brands through a robust customer journey process with irrefutable insights, analytics and metrics. Her affinity for unearthing business problems and solutions translates into tangible brand and sales growth across all channels. When it’s time to kick back, you can find MJ relaxing at her chalet or chasing her son through the glades at Jay Peak.
With two simple ingredients—innovation and creative disruption—he can bring multiple ideas to life, giving fresh perspectives to a job of any size. All with a meticulous eye for pixels, punctuation and a thoughtful, effective commitment to team leadership. He’s done the rounds at agencies big and small from New York to Toronto, lending years of experience to nearly all of our clients. Coomber loves introducing his young daughter to the joys of outdoor sport and currently awaits the day she’s big enough to ride a motorcycle.
When David left the UK and his suit-and-tie agency life behind, he came to Whistler to pursue his passion for the outdoors. And after a summer spent riding his mountain bike every waking hour, he found Origin, where his skills and experience in digital marketing met his passion for the outdoors. Now, he’s our resident oracle for all things digital and has developed a knack for distilling the digital world into regular words we all can understand.
Andrea (Winger is what we call her around here) is a visual storyteller and creative thinker. Tell her your problem and she’ll have an answer for you, most likely in storyboard format with her infamous stick figure drawings. Her directing approach has allowed her to work with numerous brands including lululemon, Microsoft and Audi. She and her sidekick Snowball can often be found deep in the backcountry, searching out the freshest air possible.
You know you have a calling for account services when you get fired up on Gantt charts and ticking off To-Do lists. Becky’s enthusiasm for systems and organization has resulted in stellar projects for Sun Valley Resort, Visit Sun Valley, Tourism Whistler, TELUS, Lululemon, and Destination British Columbia. The proud owner of a growing one-piece ski suit collection and a perpetual DIY crafter, Becky is always on the hunt for unique ideas to inspire her next project.
By all accounts (in fact, for all accounts), Lucy is a project wizard: managing deadlines, budgets and to-do lists—and making sure they all work efficiently. She brings a wealth of international marketing experience to Origin. Most notably having managed an award-winning rebrand for 250 hotels across 46 countries in the Hilton Hotels & Resorts EMEA portfolio. With dreams of competing in the Great British Bake-Off one day, the Brit is just as cozy in the woods, in a tent or in a powder field.
Being a ski coach is a lot like being an account strategist. You gotta have an eye for untapped potential, build strong trusting relationships, and genuinely believe in the objectives you want to accomplish. Maybe that’s why John is so good at his job. Or maybe it’s because he’s a natural born marketer. The reigning king of dad jokes, John’s humour is only outshined by his love for inspiring people to get outside. Offline, if he’s not actively skiing, biking or drinking beer, he’s probably taking photos of it.
Born and bred in the backwoods of Northern Vermont, Ben Hewitt is known for his way with words, an affection for wool ski attire and home-smoked bacon. With decades of experience writing for magazines such as Powder, BIKE and Outside (not to mention authoring a book or three), he's happiest when obsessing over nuances of language, skiing the Vermont backcountry and slopping his beloved pigs.
Group Account Director
Deanna Dougan
Quick quiz: Which Originer has a lip tattoo, a trophy from raising a prize-winning ewe lamb as a teenager, and - wait, there’s more! - also leads her project teams in gratitude sharing on a regular basis? Why, it’s Deana Dougan, our perpetually glass-half-full account supervisor, who’s always ready with a beaming smile, a word of encouragement, and an exquisitely constructed spreadsheet that holds the answers to questions you haven’t even thought to ask. All that, plus she speaks French and skis like she’s got wings on her feet. Which, we may someday come to find out, she does.
Fluid in multiple coding languages, Lindsay’s skills fall under the category of “things we pretend to understand.” His level of web wizardry is beyond the comprehension of us mortals. What we do know is that he takes ideas, designs and content and turns them into kick-ass websites. This South African-turned-Aussie’s expertise runs deep, just like his hunger for global adventures like partaking in a tomato fight in Valencia, running from bulls in Pamplona, sailing in Croatia and snowboarding in Bulgaria.
Web Developer
Sam Medhurst
Sam brings a blend of in-house and agency expertise to our team, with a client roster ranging from corporate heavyweights like American Express and the UK government to the more laid-back, fun-loving outdoor and lifestyle brands he truly enjoys. With a strong foundation in JavaScript and React, and a specialization in WordPress, Sam is our go-to for all things web development. Outside of work, Sam’s passions are as diverse as his client list. He’s a self-proclaimed Nickelback fan (we won’t judge), an “okay” guitar player, and a self-admitted terrible singer—especially when attempting to put a country twang on British vocals (trust us, it’s a thing). When he’s not diving into code, you can find him delving into the history of the Roman Empire or indulging in a slice (or five) of pizza.
Video Producer
Lainey Mullins
At Origin, when you know how to get shit done, you become a producer. In Lainey’s case, she brings projects over the finish line flawlessly and manages to do it with both clients and teammates loving her. Lainey’s held client service and project management roles for agencies in Canada, Ireland, and Australia, mastering the international language of “on time” and “on budget.” Like everyone else at Origin, Lainey spends her spare time playing outside. Unlike everyone else at Origin, she also jumps out of airplanes.
Design Lead
Lenka Prochazka
We can hear Lenka clapping in the background any time the words “wild” and “imagination” are smashed together. A firecracker of a designer, she has as much fun imagining fresh creative as she does swimming among eels 100 metres below the water’s surface. When it’s time to Cmd+Q, Lenka refills her creative cache with bikes, lakes, snow and puppies.
Creative Producer
Aline Mayerhoffer
Aline has called British Columbia home since 2018, but having also lived in SoCal, the south of France and a van, home usually is where lots of new challenges lie. Never short on ideas for the next one, Aline's drive, hard work and optimistic and communicative character translate perfectly into the many video projects she's successfully whipped across the finish line. If there ever is any downtime in her action packed life, she will make you sit at the campfire and entertain you in every existing (and non-existing) German dialect over a cold one.
Project Manager
Marie Bailey
Whether it was moving from England to the US at a young age, conquering Kilimanjaro or running the London Marathon, Marie remains collected in the face of any challenge. Marie’s mastery of big challenges translates directly into her role as a project manager. Armed with wicked persistence and a level of clairvoyance that would make Zoltar jealous, Marie keeps the team in line and the project on track.
Designer
Sydney Bey
In the summertime, when the living is easy, you’ll find Sydney with her toes on the nose throwing shakas at any and all who pass. When the seasons flip you can catch her on the slopes arching perfect toeside turns from the Kootenays to the Pacific Coast Ranges. Hailing from Vancouver Island, Sydney finds design inspiration from the natural surroundings she’s lived amongst since day 1. Biking, beachcombing and making perogies fill the rest of her time when she’s not crafting killer creative.
Account Manager
Ali Dawbney
With a foundation in teaching and property management, Ali’s forté is connecting with people and caring for spaces. She keeps our office in tune and our staff in harmony by handling everything from travel plans and IT rescue-missions to organizing team yoga and stoking office morale. When Ali's not carefully curating a birthday cheese board or sawing down the Origin Christmas Tree, she can be found teaching yoga, forest bathing or singing sweet serenades that lift the sky.
Account Manager
Rachael Crump
A native of Halifax, Nova Scotia now living in Vancouver, and a self-described “extroverted introvert,” Rachael lives by the rule that there’s no to-do list too long or too short that the perfect recipe of perseverance, good humour, and general awesomeness can’t accomplish. Fortunately for all of us at Origin, she’s pretty much the living embodiment of that recipe. Rachael has quickly become known and loved for her attention to detail, irrepressible good cheer and killer game of beach volleyball.
Design Lead
Cato Pulleyblank
Cato is a rare combination of creator and technician. She eats, sleeps, and breathes style sheets, Pantone numbers, paper weights, and ad specs at the office. When it’s time to unwind she leaves the details behind and heads for the forest where she can be found hiking, Nordic skiing, rock climbing or meditating.
Designer
Ellie Nixon
Hailing from Oxford, England, Ellie did as many Brits do and fell madly in love with the Sea to Sky after a visit in 2016. She promptly made the move to Canada official and has spent as much time as possible snowboarding, hiking, camping, bushwacking, and immersed in alpine lakes ever since. As one of our designers, she’s a whiz at visual communication (or, as she puts it, “making things look nice”), and is equally passionate about nailing a design as she is about hurling herself through the park. When she’s not making slick designs, you’ll likely find Ellie doing park laps or snapping photos of others doing the same.
Social Media Manager
Emily Vickerson
She can’t cook but she’ll trek the Inca Trail without batting an eyelash and tackle small tasks like launching a business with ease. Born and bred in Squamish (how rare), Emily is one of our resident social media experts with a passion for living life to its fullest – both online and off. Driven by being part of something bigger than chasing the next ‘like’, she joins the team at Origin to encourage people to live life outside, with the goal of inspiring folks to get out there and forget their phones. As long as they give us a ‘like’ when they come back inside, of course.
