Monica is an early adopter of Pinterest and currently in her dream job as Associate Creative Director for 📌 Pinterest House of Creative. 📌 For eight years she’s been helping grow the platform to half a billion monthly active users. She started at the “Big Pin” as a contractor covering for one creative director’s paternity leave — and found her work home. At Pinterest she’s spearheaded consumer and B2B multi-channel campaigns, product go-to-markets, experiential activations, the IPO, and the rebrand of the annual award-winning Pinterest Predicts program. She’s comfortable art directing on a soundstage or sweating the typographic details of a perfectly kerned letter. She’s proud of creating and securing funding for Pinterest’s speaker series, Creative Conversations, which is still running strong today with guests such as Sam Spiegel, Annie Atkins, Dana Scruggs, and Nneka Onourah.

Prior to joining Pinterest, Monica ran her own creative studio freelancing for several agencies. She is also former Design Director of the boutique agency Tomorrow Partners where for nearly a decade her creative pitches won over some of their biggest clients including Apple, OpenTable, Williams-Sonoma, Stanford University, Alter Eco Foods, Scharffen Berger Chocolates, and Klean Kanteen. Early in her career, Monica worked for a not-for-profit news magazine wearing many hats from staff photographer, art director, designer and producer. This experience taught her to roll up her sleeves to get the job done, learn new things, and, more importantly, to seek out experts.

Monica holds dual degrees — a bachelor of arts in sociology from The Evergreen State College whose mascot is a geoduck that “digs deep” for knowledge and their motto is Omnia Extares (let it all hang out). Monica also graduated with highest honors with a second bachelor of arts in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts which does not have any playful mascots or mottos.

Monica grew up in Northern California — the youngest of five children with parents who were both social workers and educators. She wanted to be a professional volleyball player and a combination of Marty McFly meets Indiana Jones, but her dreams were dashed when she realized women could only participate in a few professional sports and she was not tall enough to block a spike. (Don’t tell her Marty and Indiana Jones are not real!) Her love of playing sports and art history remain. She is happiest when she is road-tripping through Europe, exploring museums and virtually time traveling at historic sites. And she found a new sport that doesn’t require her to be 6 ft (2 m) tall — curling, for which she lead a team to a bronze medal at USA Curling’s Arena Nationals.