ABOUT ME

I’ve always been drawn to the moment when a company — or person — is trying to figure out how to say who they are and what they stand for. That liminal in-between where there are unpolished gems of ideas, glimmers of personality, and huge ambition for bringing something new to life, but maybe the words haven’t quite caught up yet: this is the space where I tend to thrive.

Over the past eighteen years, my work has lived somewhere between strategy and storytelling — defining how brands sound, guiding narrative direction, and helping creative teams make work that feels intentional rather than simply clever and well-produced. And yes, doing a whole lot of writing, editing, filmmaking, and the occasional talking out loud to myself along the way.

This career path hasn’t been exactly linear.

I started in advertising after studying copywriting at The Creative Circus. I soon left the agency life — as a wide-eyed but ambitious junior copywriter — to join a still-unnamed startup and launch a mobile app focused on local discovery and deals. As the founder’s first hire, I helped name and brand the company (Scoutmob) and then grow it into a beloved editorial platform, app, and e-commerce business with four million subscribers well before “content marketing” became industry shorthand.

I went in unsure of what startup life was all about, and left fully sure that this was the world where I belonged.

After four years of living and breathing Scoutmob, I moved to San Francisco to join Airbnb — initially on a three-month contract that quickly turned into five crazy, incredible years as the company’s first in-house Brand Writer and then Creative Lead. It was a rare, pinch-me opportunity to help shape brand storytelling during a period of rapid global growth, just after the buzzed-about rebrand. I worked across campaigns, social, and film to translate a complex platform into stories people could emotionally recognize and trust. As the team grew into a full in-house creative studio, my focus shifted toward brand purpose + narrative-driven films and content that appeared everywhere from the Super Bowl stage to Times Square to the pages of Fast Company — earning Webby and Shorty awards along the way.

Since then, I’ve partnered with a mix of startups and established companies — including Slack, GoFundMe, Glassdoor, CookUnity, WestCap, Avra, and Viceroy Hotels — helping teams clarify who they are and how they communicate across audiences, mediums, and moments of growth.

Most recently, I joined Apple, where I help lead a Retail storytelling team through video, collaborating across a large global organization to tell human stories at scale. The work continually reminds me that clarity, empathy, and genuine human connection matter even more when systems and teams are huge and technology becomes so powerful. Even within a company famous for its iconic craft and product storytelling, there is a huge need for elevating the stories of how we show up for each other as humans.

Across all of it, the throughline is the same: I maintain a huge passion for helping organizations show up consistently as themselves, especially when complexity makes that difficult.

Lately, I’ve become increasingly interested in how storytelling evolves as AI changes how content is created — what it means to preserve intention, taste, and humanity through the shift. It feels like yet another new liminal space, and one I’m excited to be exploring.

And if you’ve made it this far — hello and hi! I’m Liza.

Let’s make this a two-way conversation, shall we?

DunningLS@gmail.com