We’re Ready to Publish the Next Chapter in our Story: InkHouse Seattle

Today I am so excited to announce that InkHouse is expanding to Seattle - a fast-growing hub of entrepreneurship, tech and business innovation, and a city whose culture extends well beyond great coffee, amazing music, and the latest in aviation. Kate Riley, a Washington native and PR industry veteran with experience leading campaigns for brands like Adobe, Qualtrics and Microsoft Xbox, has joined us as Executive Vice President and General Manager of InkHouse Seattle. 

Kate is a people-driven leader who understands the impact that workplace culture has on client service and office growth. To find someone of Kate’s track record and focus has me incredibly bullish on the prospects for our fourth office...and a little jealous.

When I joined InkHouse in 2014, we had a thriving office in the Boston suburbs and a reputation that was driving demand for us to expand our presence to the west coast. It was me, Anne Baker and two other amazing teammates sitting in a sublet office where we interviewed new team members at a picnic table on astroturf and I loved it.

The thrill of knowing we were building a new office almost from scratch was liberating and scary, but less scary knowing we had the talent, infrastructure and support of our Boston team to back us up. Since then we’ve booted up our New York office - using a similar formula: local GM, amazing InkHouse transplants and a model for building an office with an enduring culture that has helped us grow to more than 120 people.

Seattle is a natural next step for InkHouse. With admired tech and consumer brands like Amazon, Microsoft, Nordstrom and Starbucks calling Seattle home, the region has become a hotbed of entrepreneurship. Companies like DocuSign, OfferUp, SmartSheet and Zulily have forged the way for what great Seattle-grown startups look like, successfully attracting investment from a growing crop of local venture capitalists and some of the most successful firms in Silicon Valley. The region has also drawn campus investments from the likes of Google, Facebook and Okta to recruit engineering and other types of talent. Seattle is now a major innovation hub rivaling Boston, New York, Austin and Denver, among others. 

But at the end of the day, everything at InkHouse comes down to culture and making decisions through the lens of what is best for our people. Every office creates a new flavor of InkHouse culture that has a positive impact on every other office. It will introduce us to new people, backgrounds, and microcultures (like Seahawk fans) that don’t exist inside the Route 128 belt, lower Manhattan or along the 101 in the Bay Area. It creates opportunities for growth for new InkHouse team members or office transplants. 

We are so excited to have Kate on board and to work with the great companies, entrepreneurs and marketing and PR teams that call not just Seattle, but also Portland, Vancouver and Spokane, home. We’re even more excited to welcome new team members to InkHouse, learn from their experiences and help them advance their careers. If you want to learn more about our plans in Seattle, please reach out at seattle@inkhouse.com.