overview

During my early tenure at BSW, I worked primarily on the Dell business across multiple agency accounts. Recent Dell work focuses on the humanity of tech and DWEN.

welcome to khaki planet.

I was born and raised in Austin. By high school in the 90’s, Dell was just that “company down the road” where my friends’ parents worked; a common economic impact news headline or a directional landmark.

Dell is solely responsible for the cookie-cutter suburban boom of South Dallas. I called it “Khaki Planet,” a nod to the Dell Sales Guy uniform of khakis and a tucked-in Polo - the blueprint for Office Space and Apple’s brilliant PC vs. Mac ad campaign.

Dell was so insignificant to me at the time that I don’t remember the make of our first computers. As an only child left to her imagination and hungry for connection, just trying to organize a desk dominated by a machine, I was more interested in where its new-fangled Internet could take me than who made it.

I didn’t consciously think about Dell until 2003.

fast forward 20 years.

I’d recently graduated with a degree in public relations and obsessively pursued a future in PR for magazines, the perfect mixed-bag for my long-time obsessions with magazines, editorial excellence and now my education. I landed a Conde Nast internship in Manhattan for early 2002.

Then the world imploded on September 11.

* GCI Read-Poland / GCI Group —> Cohn & Wolfe —> Burson Marsteller Cohn & Wolfe —>
BCW —> BCW + Hill & Knowlton —> Burson today

pivot!

New opportunities fell into a black hole of shock, trauma, economic fallout and - quite abruptly - widespread hiring freezes. I stayed in Austin to chart a new course through PR agencies.

Unformed yet somewhat experienced and terribly eager, GCI Group* - then the agency of record for Dell worldwide - was a welcome solution to my hellscape:

Career derailment before it really began.

I was immediately assigned to the Dell accounts. At its best, it was a coveted rite of passage for GCI’ers. At its worst, it was the intellectual equivalent of running the gauntlet while hogtied in a potato sack. I couldn’t tell a speed from a feed, but I was pitching InformationWeek on the latest product launch by week two. By week five, I was an expert in enterprise IT.

If this was agency life, I lived for it.

humanizing technology.

As the home office of the Dell PR business, GCI Austin was exposed to an abundance of opportunity at a cataclysmic turning* point for Dell’s business and its growing reputation as a tech innovator.

It took me ten years and three states after GCI in Texas to truly understand the audacity of my youthful unawareness. “That company down the road” - an organization not yet too big too fail - is in my blood. I deeply respect the magnitude and gravity of its impact on humanity, not to mention my career and my life.

I still call Dell “Khaki Planet,” my fondest term of endearment. I’m critical but protective of it, an “I can be harsh about my family; you can’t” mentality. And like any good little sister (I think?), I’ll keep needling and challenging it in the direction of its greatest possible impact despite its stubborn objections.

Dell is why I’m so hellbent on humanizing tech. I’ll never stop believing in its potential beyond advancing human progress to embody the humanity of tech.