Hello!

I'm an extremely curious integrated brand strategist & art executive with experience building and amplifying brands such as Walmart, Amazon, Southwest Airlines & Visa.

I tackle challenges with a culture-first approach. Understanding culture is the key to maintaining relevance and authenticity with any desired audience. This approach has allowed me to deliver inspiring creative insights and briefs that solve our biggest creative challenges.

My work experience includes everything from agencies big and small like AgencyEA and Momentum Worldwide to one of the most influential social media platforms, Twitter. Each company allowed me to fulfill one unifying theme, creating memorable experiences for audiences online and offline.

Throughout my career, I've developed experiential, digital, shopper, and cultural strategy skills, working with brands across every vertical, from retail to entertainment.

As an entrepreneur, I decided to take on the almost impossible task of diversifying one of the least diverse fields - classical music. My insatiable desire to solve culture's most complex problems led to the creation of my organization, D-Composed.

With my work as a public speaker, I've led and facilitated conversations around the experiences and inequities that marginalized communities face with partnerships with schools, institutions, and brands.

I'm a problem solver who asks many of life's biggest questions.

When I think of the thesis statement of all my work, it is to ensure that communities' voices are heard and uplifted in everything I touch.

My Biography

Kori Coleman is an arts executive, creative strategist, and entrepreneur who has built a career by leveraging the power of creativity and storytelling to encourage Black people to take up space anywhere. Her creativity is rooted in and infinitely inspired by the City of Chicago, where she lives and works.

Kori is a creative strategist by instinct and profession who has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, United Airlines, Chevron, & American Express. She leads with a culture-first approach that centers the histories, present-day realities, and future dreams of people from marginalized communities in marketing campaigns designed to solve society's biggest creative challenges.

She also applies this approach to her role as D-Composed's Founder and Executive Director. D-Composed is a Black chamber music collective and non-profit organization committed to uplifting and empowering society by providing a platform for the music of Black composers. As the Founder and Executive Director of D-Composed, Kori strives to challenge expectations about the look, feel, and sound of classical music experiences.

Since its establishment in 2017, D-Composed has redefined and modernized how chamber music is represented by creating intimate and immersive out-of-the-box experiences that take classical music out of traditional concert halls and into more everyday, accessible settings. Kori is a creative visionary who constantly conceptualizes innovative ways to advance the organization's mission while promoting the talents of local Chicago creatives.

With Kori's leadership, D-Composed has collaborated with over thirty Black creatives, both city-wide and nationally, on programming, events, and multimedia content designed to honor the humanity and creativity of Black people. She has also facilitated partnerships between D-Composed and esteemed institutions such as the University of Chicago, The Kennedy Center, and TEDx.

Kori has dedicated her career to creating human-centered projects celebrating the Black community, especially in her hometown of Chicago. During her previous career in entertainment & lifestyle media production, Kori developed the digital luxury lifestyle brand, The Chicagolite, a play on the word "socialite," to inspire people to believe that they belong in any space they choose to take up and to empower them to reject the racist and classist barriers that society imposes on luxury and cultural experiences.

Kori is a proud alumna of Spelman College and is an associate board member of Harris Theater for Music & Dance, where she sits on the Community and Audience Development Committee. As a sought-after public speaker, Kori has shared her perspectives on the power of Black creativity and storytelling through collaborations with AT&T, Apple, and Athleta.