Coates Kokes is a strategic communications, branding and advertising firm focused on clients in the cause and non-profit segments. After over four decades of partnering with clients across a broad range of business sectors, we’ve come to know this is our true place and how we serve our community best.
At the heart of it
What moves you? We know what moves us. It’s partnering with good people to fuel good causes and companies in their quest to help shape a happier, healthier world. Good missions driven by good ideas beget good results. Good ideas catch fire and spread.
Sounds easy perhaps. And perhaps it should be when you’re working with such rich clay. But cultivating powerful, actionable ideas must always begin with clear intent, heading down a path of surgical discovery to find the inner soul of what makes a mission or movement truly enticing.
With all our hearts
Meet our team of passionate professionals who aren’t just here for the paycheck. Driven by a desire to be part of something greater, the choice to join our journeys of discovery felt natural.
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Anri Elliott
Account Director
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Anri Elliott
Account Director
Anri Elliott, a.k.a. our Miss World. You see, Anri is of two nationalities and has moved every three years of her life. Due to her diverse upbringing, Anri loves to travel and eat; her personal rule is that she must try food twice before making a judgment. Her ad career began in L.A., with clients like Wonka, Raisinets, and Butterfinger. At CK, she manages accounts focused on healthy living—yes, she’s aware of the irony. As an Account Director, Anri always keeps her clients’ work moving forward in an on-strategy, on-time, on-budget sort of way. Between on-s, Anri is usually on a mission to find Portland’s best fried chicken and sushi.
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Chapin Hemmingway
Associate Creative Director
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Chapin Hemmingway
Associate Creative Director
A question often heard around Coates Kokes: Where’s Chapin? Likely answer: Almost anywhere. As director, producer, and shooter for most all CK video productions, Chapin travels the Northwest capturing the assets we need to produce some pretty cool television commercials and web videos for our clients. When he’s got what he needs, Chapin returns to the darkness of the CK editing suite to coerce all his captive pixels into performing on command. Then, next thing you know, Chapin is on the road again. Hope he says hi to Willie for us.
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Christina Bertalot
Account Director
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Christina Bertalot
Account Director
Account Director is just one of Christina’s many titles. She’s a Master Juggler, Chief Organizer, and her favorite, Mom. Over the years, Christina has managed accounts for several clients with intricate structures and complex communications needs. Success is certain with Christina, because she gets everyone and everything moving in the same direction, whether it’s managing a digital campaign for a company of 4,000 or getting dinner on the table for her family of four. Beyond work, she dedicates her time to youth-focused organizations like Eco School Network, SW Portland Little League, CYO, and Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington. Her happiest moments come when she is helping others.
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Claire Coffey
Senior Account Manager
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Claire Coffey
Senior Account Manager
First thing’s first: Claire wrote her Master’s thesis on World of Warcraft. Though many life paths may lead to the eventuality of writing a dedicated academic analysis of WoW, Claire’s quest began here in Oregon. She received her undergrad at PSU before traversing oceans and fjords to live in the west of Norway for 5 years. Lucky for us, Claire sojourned back to Oregon to build hearth and home in PDX, and to assume the lofty throne of Senior Account Manager at CK. Should you seek Claire outside of office hours, you may find her feasting her way through a food crawl, honing her craft as a decorative cake baker, or fighting valiantly to end youth homelessness with P:ear Mentor. If not, she’s probably artfully disguised in some sort of elaborate costume of her own making.
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Erin McGuire
Associate Creative Director
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Erin McGuire
Associate Creative Director
Erin leads CK’s design team, overseeing creative strategy. She excels at delivering messages to audiences using compelling visuals with staying power, whether that’s concepting ads about energy efficiency and renewable power, or launching a new craft brewery brand. Good design is thoughtful and has purpose, and she allows that process to develop organically, always to the client’s benefit. Her eye for design goes beyond the office, from woodworking with her dad, building everything from coffee tables and gameboards, to designing a “street piano” with her mom for neighborhood kids to paint. Requests that ruffle designers' feathers: Can you high-res that? The logo should pop more. What about comic sans?
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Jeanie Coates
Founder Emerita
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Jeanie Coates
Founder Emerita
As company founder, Jeanie continues to stay connected to the agency following her recent retirement. Having spent 45 years leading the firm as CEO, she now continues as Chairman of the Board and serves as a uniquely honed sounding board for the next generation of leadership. Jeanie’s career path began in the seventies looping through the San Francisco ad scene before returning to her native Portland. New priorities since retirement include learning French while helping a darling toddler granddaughter learn English.
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Kellie O'Rourke
Accounting Manager
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Kellie O'Rourke
Accounting Manager
Originally from Georgia, our peach of an accounting manager comes to us by way of California where the daily sunshine grew a bit boring for her taste. “Weather, I need some weather!” she thought, and up to the Oregon rain she came. At CK, Kellie is part of our 3-person admin team keeping order in kitchen and all around world headquarters. Whether we need something cleaned, copied, filled, filed, ordered or returned, we know we can all count on Kellie to make it happen. Off campus, Kellie is currently working on developing her quilting skills—blue is her favorite color.
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Kelsey Overbey
Graphic Designer
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Kelsey Overbey
Graphic Designer
Originally from Seattle, WA, Kelsey made their way to the CK Design Department after spending nearly 5 years working and studying in Dublin, Ireland. Kelsey has always been passionate about art and design, and especially loves creating works that positively impact others. They have volunteered as a graphic artist for climate activist groups and enjoy running T-shirt campaigns to raise money for charitable organizations. At any given moment in time, Kelsey can be found plotting their next trip to the coast, mainlining some kind of spooky podcast, watching Kraken hockey (or a good horror flick), and trying to avoid their impulse to visit the local humane society and adopt all of them.
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Lance Heisler
Associate PR Director
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Lance Heisler
Associate PR Director
Lance gives “The Most Interesting Man in the World” some stiff competition. It’s not unusual to find him sporting a bowtie, wielding a mystery novel in one hand, and ping pong paddle in the other. His favorite foods are tapas—don’t act surprised if he orders them in Spanish. He first learned to “bring home the bacon” from his pig farming days. A self-proclaimed “coffee slinger”, he always knows how to handle the scoop—whether it’s coffee beans or in media relations.
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Lindsay Frank
Vice President of Operations
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Lindsay Frank
Vice President of Operations
As Veep of Ops, Lindsay’s in charge of anything that can possibly go wrong. The way one gets named to such a high-ranking position is to know something about everything by way of starting at the front desk and working your way through every single department in the agency. And that’s exactly what Lindsay did beginning back near the early dawn of CK history. Now we trust her so much, we let her manage the money too. Lindsay is downright excellent with a calculator.
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Maureen Bernadelli-Suter
Media Director
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Maureen Bernadelli-Suter
Media Director
Although Maureen is one of our two agency media directors, she is the only one with a hyphenated last name. As such, she’s double good at planning, placing, and post-buy evaluating media for our clients. Maureen is excellent with numbers preceded by dollar signs and exceptional at delving into the aspects of one of our favorite media terms: “psychographics.” Simply put, she gets inside the consumer’s head. When not performing media brain surgery here at CK, Maureen runs an urgent-care media business on the side.
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Meghan Burke
Media Director
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Meghan Burke
Media Director
As one half of our media powerhouse, Meghan is fully fluent in both traditional and digital media. So whether your ad should appear in a magazine or on one of today’s umpteen different screens, Meghan will get it all figured out. Media maven title aside, Meghan is best known as the CK mother of “Bring Your Dog to Work Day,” an annual event involving Bantry, Barkley, Belle, Roger and Pork Chop turned Petunia. All woofers receive a special award and a canine cookie made from Meghan’s secret recipe.
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Rachael Bowen
Senior Account Manager
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Rachael Bowen
Senior Account Manager
Born and raised in PDX, Rachael pursued her undergrad at the U of O (one of several Ducks in the office flock) and cut her teeth working for local campaigns in Washington, DC and Chicago. Before moving back to Portland and freelancing as an Account Manager for CK, Rachael’s passions lead her to Paris and Berlin, where she earned a Graduate degree in Public Policy and a deep appreciation for a fresh-baked morning croissant. When she’s off the clock, Rachael loves spending time in the great outdoors of the PNW, especially when her son and her Labrador Retriever, Maddie, can come along. Rachael remains politically active and enjoys volunteer canvassing, so don’t be surprised if she comes a-knocking this election season!
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John Michael Sproles
Social Media Manager
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John Michael Sproles
Social Media Manager
Sproles is a skilled communicator who previously worked as a social media manager for a nationwide digital real estate firm, and as a journalist in the Portland metro area covering everything from A&E to gentrification. He’s passionate about issues surrounding equity and racial justice. In search of the seasons, he first moved from the beautiful island of O'ahu to Forest Grove to study journalism at Pacific University. Although he is far from where he grew up, he takes pride in his "Aloha Spirit.” Outside of work, he can be found exploring local record stores to grow his extensive vinyl collection, with a focus for hip hop. But when he’s out at the local karaoke bars, you’ll find him onstage belting Earth, Wind & Fire's “September” for the dance-ready crowds.
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Steve Kokes
President & Strategic Director
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Steve Kokes
President & Strategic Director
As president and strategic director, Steve leads the collective client-agency team effort to unearth the most salient strategies for clients with both cause-oriented and business objectives. Steve’s career path first began with deep-dive stops at notable S.F. and L.A. agencies. Lured home to Duck-land in 1992 (Steve is a boastfully proud UO Journalism graduate), Steve has ever since been artfully demonstrating his Mad Men strategic abilities here in the Northwest.
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Sue Van Brocklin
Vice President/PR Director
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Sue Van Brocklin
Vice President/PR Director
Sue leads the agency’s PR team, including media relations, writing of all types and sponsored content creation. She’s also a seasoned pro in crisis communications and reputation management. Her career has been an impressive journey through the halls of PR firms and local/national government. When it comes to PR, Sue can handle it all. When she’s not speaking with reporters or advising clients, she enjoys spending time with her three daughters and husband. She can be spotted exploring the city’s natural areas and viewing urban wildlife, excitedly sending candid photos of racoons, beavers and deer to friends. Who knew there were so many owls in Portland? Sue did.
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The B in our DNA
We’d be proud to be in partnership with you and want you to feel proud being in partnership with us. As a B Corp, you can have faith that we’re out there doing our best to contribute to a better world too.
Our extended family
We are honored to be the exclusive Oregon member of the MAGNET Marketing and Advertising Global Network. Via our affiliates, we routinely reach across North America and around the world to grow our expertise and assist our clients whenever the need arises.
