About Us

Damaris Alfonso

Juan Ávila

Alexa Ball

Damaris Alfonso

Director

As the child of an industrial designer and a journalist, pragmatic creativity has always been a mainstay in Damaris’ life. Her dad once explained the work of the invisible people who create logos during a visit to an antique store. The rest is history.

In her decade of work as a graphic designer, she is an expert at using illustration to catch people’s attention and communicate complex topics. Taking a client's nascent idea and turning it into a fully-realized brand – built from the ground up, from logo to infographic – is one of the most rewarding aspects of her career.

She is equal parts communicator and student, seeing every client as an opportunity to learn about a new industry or science, and explore new ways to visually communicate with a variety of audiences. Some of the brands she’s proudly brought to life include A-Alpha Bio, ITER, Avalo, and As You Are.

Her favorite (and highly recommended!) podcasts include Heavyweight, Decoder Ring, and 99% Invisible.

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A-Alpha Bio
As You Are
Avalo
ITER
OPEN
Syzygy Plasmonics

Juan Ávila

Manager

Juan discovered his love for collaboration in his hometown of Bogotá, Colombia, working as a pianist with local ensembles. These formative experiences led him to earn a doctorate in music, where he thrived on the mix of precision, research, and art required in the program.

Having developed an interest in business, Juan went on to earn an MBA before moving to Austin and discovering JDI. As a marketing firm making science companies well-known and understood, JDI is a place where Juan can put his business acumen to work while satisfying his love for creative collaboration.

Ultimately, it’s Juan’s curiosity about how the world works that drove him to develop expertise across AI, Synthetic Biology, New Space, and the Energy Transition. Juan recalls first learning to use a screwdriver and how — to his parents’ dismay — he started disassembling anything he could get his hands on. Now, Juan spends his days unraveling the scientific discoveries made by clients and the things they’ve made.

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A-Alpha Bio
Quaise
Synthetaic

Alexa Ball

Vice President

Alexa believes the world flourishes when we are brave enough to change our minds. Her mission is to steward that process in others: her clients, the markets they serve, and the members of our JDI team.

Alexa is expert at building brand stories and identities, and in developing strategies to use those narratives effectively to influence entire markets. A few notable clients: Natural Fiber Welding, edX, Color Factory, and Dimension Inx.

In addition to time spent with clients, making sure JDI’s strategies meet their business needs and are executed with creativity and precision, Alexa focuses on growing our team (in all senses of the phrase) through recruiting, training, and development.

Alexa is a therapeutic riding instructor and President of the Board at Healing with Horses Ranch. She works with her hands as much as possible, gardening and starting any number of house projects on the weekends. You’ll rarely find her without dirt under her nails or her canine companion, Luna.

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Color Factory
Dimension Inx
edX
Natural Fiber Welding

Talia Bromberg

Justin Davis

Rebecca Ewing

Talia Bromberg

Senior Director

Talia loves the ephemeral nature of design, which turns intangible feelings and ideas into a tangible experience that communicates something and serves someone. Taking a client’s vision and goals and translating them into visual form is an extraordinary and rewarding challenge.

Talia’s academic and work experiences align with her desire to understand people and human behavior. She studied film and anthropology at Mount Holyoke College and assessed independent films for potential acquisition and distribution at FilmBuff.com. Design is at the crossroads of visual creativity and the pursuit of human understanding; it begins with understanding the user, along with their challenges and desires.

Talia previously worked for Mogul.com, a platform to help women across the globe connect and exchange knowledge. Mogul exposed her to design thinking and the ins and outs of product development, along with the opportunity to design in different media from VR and animation to app design.

Find out more about Talia on LinkedIn.

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WorldQuant Predictive
Civic I/O
Squarelink
DivInc.
Skyloom
Clarus
Litmus Health
Veritas
Foundation Communities
SAFE

Justin Davis

Head of Finance

Justin ensures that JDI meets its financial goals and stewards its resources responsibly.

He excels at analyzing and interpreting data, and his insight is valued by executives in helping to guide decisions. The team has a high degree of trust in Justin’s integrity and meticulous eye.

Prior to JDI, Justin was in Loss Mitigation at OneWest Bank. He built the bank’s first quality control department, implemented new auditing policies, and helped senior executives navigate an ever-changing landscape of regulation and compliance issues.

Justin values precision, accuracy, and clarity; he speaks spreadsheet as a second language. He believes no process is sacred, or perfect. He’s uniquely gifted at finding the signal in the noise.

On any given day, he’s either doing mathematical party tricks for the amusement of the team, making the team laugh, or reading up on the San Antonio Spurs. Justin is unbeatable at movie and TV trivia, and he would like to be an avid golfer.

Find out more about Justin on LinkedIn.

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DSACT
Litmus

Rebecca Ewing

Vice President

As a Vice President at JDI, Rebecca is focused on creative services: from copywriting to graphic design and code, from photography to film and audio production. She has spent a decade as both a verbal and a visual communicator, helping companies large and small craft a narrative that speaks volumes. She's a marketer by trade, but an artist at heart. Rebecca believes that the best designs in any medium are data-driven and customer-obsessed. After years as a communicator, she is building a unique creative department at JDI that looks at client challenges from the same side of the table as marketing itself.

The majority of her experience lies in emerging consumer technology, with a focus on sports, entertainment, health and social impact. Previous to JDI, Rebecca spent two and a half years at global agency Porter Novelli, for which she's eternally grateful. There was no better place to learn the ropes; PN instilled in her the drive of an entrepreneur and opened her eyes to a wide world of innovation.

Find out more about Rebecca on LinkedIn.

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Featured clients

Kernel
Siri
Mirum
Structured Polymers
Triggr Health
Color Factory
Outbox
Upstream
Vulcan
SXSW
The Daily Dot

Tony Fassi

Gabby Ferguson

Risa Fielder

Tony Fassi

Vice President

Tony is a lifelong tinkerer and naturalist — he bought his first telescope at age 12 and built almost every computer he’s owned. He’s driven to both understand how things work and tell stories that inspire a similar curiosity in others.

This is especially true with applied science and emerging technology, and at JDI he applies his expertise across AI, New Space, the Energy Transition, Quantum Computing, and Genomics. In addition to developing successful marketing strategies, the majority of his work spans content creation – writing long-form op-eds, white papers, and case studies — media relations, and messaging and positioning. In all these ways, he conspires with our clients to bring some of the world’s most impactful technologies to market.

Before joining JDI, Tony worked as a US Coast Guard Captain and a divemaster, founded a coffee roasting company, and earned a doctorate in American Studies at UT Austin where he taught courses on the history of underground infrastructure and the rhetoric of futurism.

These days Tony spends as much time as he can exploring the outdoors on slow, meandering walks with his daughter, reading pulp detective fiction, and taking stuff apart.

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Bonsai
Clear Labs
Phasecraft
Satellogic
Synthetaic
VIV

Gabby Ferguson

Manager

Anyone who knows Gabby will tell you that her name doubles as an apt personality description, but she likes to think of herself as a passionate communicator instead.

Gabby attended the Missouri School of Journalism, where she was cross trained in journalism and strategic communication. Here, she found her purpose: shaping clients' stories so that consumers understand their brilliance and impact.

In so many different ways at JDI, she gets to do this every day by introducing the world to her mission-driven clients that promote scientific discovery. While she likes to think of herself as a generalist, she has a particular love for media relations and brand positioning to tell the client story. Some of the clients she’s helped grow include: Brane Audio, Curie Co and Switchboard.

Outside of JDI, Gabby balances her pop culture obsession with yoga, walks and lots of quality time with friends and family. While she’s a midwesterner at heart, she is enjoying her much warmer home in Austin, TX.

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Babel Street
Brane Audio
Curie Co
Switchboard

Risa Fielder

Senior Director

As a child, Risa would constantly pester her mother to stop the car so she could ask people what they were doing and, more importantly, why they were doing it. She continues to draw from this deep well of genuine curiosity, especially when navigating life’s most consequential decisions.

Risa currently serves as Chief of Staff to Josh Jones-Dilworth, CEO of JDI — a boutique marketing and communications firm with a mission to promote science companies. She amplifies his work as a thought partner, project manager, and implementer on strategic projects. Risa is also a member of the global Chief of Staff Association and loves embarking on new opportunities with this group of highly talented individuals.

Helping people is a driving force in her life, and she strives to have an impact on whatever she does. Risa currently serves on the Advisory Board of Hearts2Heal, mentors people making the leap from the service industry to corporate work, and volunteers as often as possible at her children’s elementary school.

Risa’s proudest accomplishments come from her family which she lovingly calls the Fantastic Fielders.

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First Dollar
Kernel
Senseye
WorldQuant University

Doug Freeman

Michelle Gamboa

Rose Garza

Doug Freeman

Senior Director

Doug is fascinated by how we talk about science and how these stories inform social and cultural narratives.

As a founding member of JDI, Doug helped develop the firm’s expertise in AI, New Space, the energy transition, and emerging frontier sciences. He works across clients to discern emergent trends, develop new initiatives, and help companies define their vision and strategy in rapidly evolving industries. Most of all, Doug’s keen curiosity drives him to uncover the unique stories that most need telling.

Doug earned his Master’s degree studying digital rhetoric at The University of Texas, where he taught in the Digital Writing and Research Lab. He writes for the Austin Chronicle, profiling some of the most interesting artists and personalities throughout Texas. He is co-editor of the Austin Chronicle Music Anthology, published by University of Texas Press.

Doug is an advisor to the Arch Mission Foundation, a not-for-profit backing up the collective knowledge of planet Earth, and NanoSafe, which helps organizations manage nanotechnology environmental health and safety (EHS) risks.

Doug laughs too loud, argues too much, and asks far too many questions.

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Brane Audio
Roku
SRI International
VIV
Vulcan

Michelle Gamboa

Director

Michelle’s core mission is to help people thrive. She puts this mission to work on the JDI operations team, helping lead recruitment, training, and development.

In her day to day, she strives to make professional development collaborative and purposeful. She loves drawing out the expertise of those around her to design impactful learning experiences. Her knack for creating streamlined systems and organizing focused resources ensures growth is easy and accessible for the whole team.

Michelle has always been passionate about empowering others through teaching and learning. In her career, she has taught English in South Korea, trained Starbucks baristas on customer service, guided teenagers in literary analysis, and connected educators to local chefs and hoteliers for unconventional curriculum development.

Outside of JDI, Michelle enjoys cooking competition shows, true crime podcasts, and sci-fi and fantasy. She also loves doing jigsaw puzzles and exploring small Texas towns.

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Rose Garza

Director

Rose is an award-winning advertising professional whose passion for the craft started at a young age. From Miss Cleo and Mr. Six to Fruitomic Punch Gushers to Budweiser's "Wazzup?" — these well-told stories left a lasting impression that has been a guiding force in her life and a challenge to create content that resonates and changes the way consumers think.

At JDI, she is responsible for the end-to-end management of advertising campaigns, from strategy to analysis. Her holistic approach to paid media involves finding golden nuggets in raw data. She leverages authentic storytelling to captivate audiences and develop an emotional connection that drives conversions.

Rose has immersed herself in all things advertising, from serving in various leadership and board positions for American Advertising Federation and Ad 2 to helping craft fully pro-bono marketing campaigns for nonprofit clients in her community during her free time. When she’s not running campaigns, you might find her casting a line.

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Shanna Gerlach

Cameron Gordon

Ali Haider

Shanna Gerlach

Manager

Instead of going to preschool like most kids, Shanna spent her most formative toddler years at her family’s kitchen table splattered with paint and glue. Though Shanna doesn’t remember exactly what she created, she does remember how: with abandon, confidence, curiosity, and boundless ambition.

In her design work, she is passionate about surprising people, immersing them in unexpected experiences that spark wonder just as fluently as they communicate complex ideas. In addition to her work on branding and website design, Shanna is an expert at social media, decks, and physical collateral projects.

Shanna thrives in handling emergent and high-stakes situations. She’s honed these skills as a camp advisor with Camp Kesem (a national non-profit for kids impacted by a parent’s cancer) and carries that leadership and follow-through to her work today, ensuring that the big ideas she has actually come to life.

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Boundless Play
Brane Audio
MAS Cultura
NextSense
Senseye
Tynt

Cameron Gordon

Manager

Cameron is a Marketing Manager at JDI, where she helps clients tell their stories impactfully by bringing different perspectives to the table. Sensitive and empathetic, Cammie has often been referred to as a quiet leader. At an early age, she learned that everyone has a voice that deserves to be heard, and is firm in her belief that the best leaders are the best listeners.

Cameron was drawn to JDI because of its diversity. In her time at JDI, she has developed expertise in media relations and has utilized her background in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging to provide clients with insights that help them connect with their audience and bring their stories and products to life. In her time at JDI, she has had the pleasure of working with Skyhook Solar, edX, and Norbert Health — a few of our clients who are unwavering in their commitment to utilizing science, technology, and innovation to create a better future for us all.

Cameron received her BA in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Communications from Tulane University. Through her studies, she was provided with the tools to craft a critical intersectional lens for viewing the world around her and she fully intends to use it! Cameron moved to Austin from Baltimore, Maryland about a year ago and loves to spend her free time exploring the city, painting, drawing, and writing.

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edX
Hearts to Heal
Skyhook

Ali Haider

Senior Director

Ali Haider enjoys helping entrepreneurs with compelling science build companies that ensure they have a prominent voice in their industry. Although a generalist at heart, Ali is particularly passionate about businesses that create a more sustainable world for future generations.

His dual heritage gives Ali an appreciation for the complexity and wonder of the human experience. While diligent in his pursuit of knowledge, he also embraces uncertainty with a sense of curiosity. This trait is invaluable when developing strategic marketing plans for science and technology companies, where the right answer is not always the obvious answer.

Ali believes in the power of good writing and approaches any piece of writing as a storyteller — valuing voice and narrative form. He gets excited about tinkering with language and the order of words until a sentence sings. In his free time, he enjoys baking bread and playing tennis.

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Cemvita
Mission Barns
Quaise
Skyloom
Yobe

Josh Jones-Dilworth

Liz Jones-Dilworth

Jack Kaulfus

Josh Jones-Dilworth

Founder & CEO

Hi there! I’m an entrepreneur, marketing leader and teacher driven by the transformative experience I had at McDonogh School in Baltimore.

McDonogh gave me a full ride and changed my world forever. The school's mission is based on the idea that students should "study in the course of their lives to do the greatest possible amount of good."

In my entrepreneurial work, I founded JDI and lead the firm today as CEO. JDI is the center of my professional universe. We are an integrated marketing firm that helps make precedent-setting science and emerging tech companies well known and understood. I love my team and our clients. Building JDI has been my life’s work, and a deeply gratifying experience.

At JDI I am also currently leading a team to create a new community called Penrose. We are convening 150 of the most consequential people in the science world — researchers, inventors, funders, nonprofit and government leaders, entrepreneurs, executives, and storytellers. The goal: to be with each other at the edge of our thinking, against a backdrop of wicked interdisciplinary problems.

Along the way I have also co-founded Litmus Health (infrastructure for real-world evidence), The Daily Dot (the internet's hometown newspaper), Culturati (the leading conference and community of company culture leaders) and New Civic (a project to catalyze American civic and philanthropic engagement). I am also co-owner of the science magazine Nautilus and proudly serve on its Board.

Separately, I serve as an Advisor to Synthetaic (AI-driven object detection), Clearwater (insuretech innovator), Mithril (sustainable ocean mining), and the Arch Mission Foundation (permanent knowledge archive).

My nonprofit and education work is extensive. I’m the outgoing Board Chair of DivInc. I was an Advisor to Mayor Steve Adler for all 8 years of his time in office. I teach part-time in the MBA in Entrepreneurship program at the Acton School of Business. I serve on the McDonogh School Board of Trustees. Finally, I chair the Board of Folio Collaborative.

In terms of personal growth, these days I am spending more and more time with Vocare, a invite-only, mastermind-style forum of high capacity leaders uniquely called to make a difference in the world. In addition to my own forum, I am training to facilitate others. I am also helping assemble new cohorts.

If you’re on a mission to do good in the world, I hope our paths will cross. A more exhaustive version of my bio lives here.

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Siri
Viv
WolframAlpha
Clear Labs
SRI International
Kernel
Nginx
My ASICS
Fuzionaire
Arch Mission
Zocdoc
Outbox
Roku
Canvas 1839
WorldQuant University
Hypergiant

Liz Jones-Dilworth

President & COO

As President and COO, Liz’s mission at JDI is to build an environment for creative people to thrive. Vital to that mission are financial stability, individual and team health, and continuous learning and development. Her work focuses on building a work community that engages our team’s many talents and allows us to absorb ourselves in problems to solve creatively together.

With the operations department, Liz stewards our finances, gathers and interprets data to guide strategy, recruits and trains, writes policies, makes the JDI office more beautiful, and fosters a culture that strives toward growth and generosity.

Outside of JDI, Liz founded the Core Alumni Advisory Council at Boston University, which celebrates interdisciplinary education. She is Vice President of the Board of Welcome Table, a source of community for neighbors creating abundance in East Austin. She also serves as Secretary of the board of the Rude Mechanicals, an avant-garde theater company.

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The Daily Dot
Litmus
DSACT
Farmobile
Culturati
Vida
Clear Labs

Jack Kaulfus

Manager

Jack has dedicated almost two decades to creating opportunities for people to explore and communicate ideas. At JDI, they are continuing that mission in helping bring science companies to market and clearly communicating their technologies to the world.

Jack has served as a teacher, writer and editor — all experiences that guide their creative collaborations with clients and colleagues at JDI. They have worked with companies across a number of industries providing meaningful thought leadership, messaging and positioning, media relations, and content development. They’re specifically focused on helping education-centered clients navigate the changing world of higher ed and K-12 by bringing top-notch research, writing and communication skills to their teams.

Jack is a fiction writer, and ⅕ of the queer Americana band Brand New Key. In cooler weather, you can find them hiking the trails around Austin with their dog. All the other months, they’ll be reading horror and watching TV in the AC.

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Kevin LaHaise

Emily Leclair

Sohaila Mueller

Kevin LaHaise

Partner

Kevin is a Partner at JDI. His career has been spent helping science-driven ventures achieve admirable goals and change lives across the world. As an experienced strategist he helps frame and reframe complex business challenges to produce the insights clients need to succeed. As a career-long marketer, he blends his experience across owned, earned and paid media to develop campaigns and programs that deliver results.

While he has helped develop and execute transformative marketing programs across all of JDI’s practice areas, he will talk your ear off about his roots in enterprise software and artificial intelligence.

As a member of JDI’s executive team Kevin is pivotal in helping to shape and grow the firm. In addition to his work with clients, he also leads JDI’s marketing department and is General Manager of Totem, a software startup incubated at JDI.

Outside of work, you can find him playing excessively competitive rounds of miniature golf with his wife and two children, or exploring the spectacular trails in MetroWest Boston with his golden retriever Rosie.

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Republic Wireless
WorldQuant University
Conversable
Groundfloor
Aptimize
NGINX
OpenStack
Hypergiant
Bandwidth.com
Next IT
Siri
Viv

Emily Leclair

Manager

Emily has passion for bringing people together. Navigating complex schedules to get the right people in the room is rarely easy, especially in a growing company, but there’s nothing better than being able to tell her colleagues she’s found a solution that meets our client’s needs.

On JDI’s operations team, she facilitates our team’s feedback and evaluation processes. She helps find new amazing team members as part of the recruitment team. And she plans important celebrations — her favorite part!

Emily’s training in acting and improvisation is called upon often in our fast-paced agency. Listening and responding with empathy, building on ideas, and forming relationships quickly are all skills she’s grateful to be able to bring to work.

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Sohaila Mueller

Manager

Sohaila has spent a lifetime mastering how to bend the constraints of space, time, and resources to her will.

At JDI, she ensures the company operates at a high level through office management, finances, IT, and client relationships. You can find her doing everything from advanced plant care, planning elaborate team happy hours, maintaining a standard of professional client care, solving sticky IT quandaries, and generally making everyone’s day better.

Sohaila loves to see people thrive and eagerly removes obstacles that keep them from doing so.

Prior to JDI, Sohaila worked at a community center where she fed 60 people twice a day. She did so without a functional kitchen and relying only on food bank donations. She’s at her best when she's cartwheeling between a variety of tasks, stomping out fires, and yanking out inefficiency by the root. When she is not reading voraciously, you can find her on the golf course or in the garden, always birdwatching.

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Yvonne Oaks

Brittany Solano

Heather Stafford

Yvonne Oaks

Director

Yvonne is a Director on the Business Development team at JDI where she manages our client funnel and internal team processes. Her curious nature and interest in everything helps her create dynamic environments where people can flourish.

She strives to make the team’s day to day easier through concise, time saving initiatives and intentional systems. She also helps prospective new clients discern how JDI can help them achieve their goals. With practice from 17 years in the hospitality industry, she has the unique ability to wear many hats while still being laser focused on the matter at hand — handling it all with grace. In the hotel industry, Yvonne helped grow and serve the corporate customer base of a large innovative hotelier with a half billion in annual revenue.

In everything she does, the person comes first. Her people-first approach to problem-solving and team management humanizes the fine art of getting things done.

In her free time, you will find Yvonne watching or performing in local theatre or cheering on her son, the budding soccer star and her daughter the dancing diva.

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Brittany Solano

Vice President

As Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Brittany works with brilliant engineers, scientists, and founders to tell stories about their breakthroughs and the impact they’ll have on the world around us. She's driven by a desire to translate our clients’ work to a mass market, and is particularly skilled at understanding complex science concepts across a variety of industries.

Brittany runs JDI’s business development department, where she builds the team, systems, and relationships that help JDI find and serve precedent-setting science companies.

She also leads JDI’s bioscience and food systems practice areas. She’s constantly seeking out the enabling technologies and scientific breakthroughs that will fuel the next moonshot.

In both her role as the head of business development and an executive across our marketing accounts, she thrives on crafting marketing strategies that are tied to business outcomes. Over her 10 years at JDI, she’s developed and successfully executed robust PR and marketing programs for clients including Clear Labs, Natural Fiber Welding, Kernel, Mission Barns, Brane Audio, Farmobile, Skyloom, A-Alpha Bio, and more.

Brittany lives outside of Austin, TX in historic Georgetown (the most beautiful town square in Texas, y’all), with her partner Tim, and two young kids, Andy and June. She finds joy in movement and the outdoors.

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A-Alpha Bio
Cemvita
Clear Labs
Curie Co
Mission Barns

Heather Stafford

Director

Above all, Heather is a believer in the power of a good story. Whether telling a story from her years as a bus driver or explaining forefront technologies to the public, the goal is the same: to get people to pay attention. A well developed, breakthrough technology is necessary — but not sufficient — to transform industries. Even a scientific breakthrough needs a compelling story to maximize its impact on the world. That’s why this raconteuse chose to become a marketer.

In her tenure at JDI, Heather has led dozens of accounts across a variety of markets, with a focus on breakthroughs in the health- and biotech industries. She has delivered client results across owned, earned, and paid media, but has a passion for and specialty in messaging and positioning, content marketing, and lead generation.

Outside of work, she enjoys margaritas, true crime podcasts, and a good horror movie.

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Farmobile
Hypergiant
Vida Health
WorldQuant University
Canvas 1839
Transmute

Jamal Wilburn

Senior Director

Jamal’s career has spanned finance, media, theater, entrepreneurship, and technology. What ties it all together is a passion for how creative thinking and communication unfold in a business context.

Jamal is Senior Director of Business Development at JDI, where he spends his time reframing the questions that founding teams face. Jamal builds relationships with risk-takers by helping them map their motivations, goals, and emotions back to a cogent marketing strategy.

Jamal studied International Business and Finance at Howard University, and Finance and Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prior to JDI, Jamal’s experience at investment management firms William Blair & Company and Dimensional Fund Advisors gave him the ability to provide strong counsel and keep his clients focused on the most intense needs of their target audiences.

Outside the office, Jamal is often volunteering on the boards of various nonprofits, reading the Economist, working on his deadlift, or watching Netflix. And chilling.

Find out more about Jamal on LinkedIn.

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Canvas 1839
Traverse
DivInc
Satellogic
ScaleFactor

JDI is a boutique consultancy that brings emerging technology and science-driven companies to market.

Our clients are on a mission, and so are we.

Do you love science and communication?