Derek Sikkelee

*** **** ******

San Francisco, CA 94117

cell phone: 415-***-****

acojxo@r.postjobfree.com

marketing portfolio: http://www.behance.net/DerekS

Innovative Copywriter & Brand Strategist with clients that include:

Slap Ya Mama Cajun Seasonings, Southpoint & Southwest Volkswagen, Evergreen Working Capital, Waters & Pettit, Ocean Conservancy, Dadascope Communications, Cypress Title, Mansurs on the Boulevard, Club Z! Tutoring, Blu Homes, Artistic Dentistry, Lamps & Lighting, Louisiana Pest Control, LPK Bar + Grill, and Petz Plaza

Experience & Skills

Creative Director, Copywriter, & Brand Strategist

March 2011 - Present

Freelancer & 2 Hundred Oaks Brand Management

South Louisiana, Washington DC, & the Bay Area

• Conceive, write, and manage the creative work, copy, campaigns, and art direction for a boutique advertising, marketing, and branding business.

• Envision, oversee, coalesce, direct, and comprehensively manage all content for clients’ websites and social media forums by consistently finding new ways to increasingly reinforce and build on the client’s brand with innovative communication efforts that ensure continuity across all marketing platforms.

• Write, develop, and test resonant, exciting, and dynamically fresh messaging content and calls-to-action for any and all client web presences in order to dramatically improve organic interfacing, user experiences, and takeaways that keep targets talking, sharing, and returning.

• Create immediately accessible and memorable taglines, brand copy, graphics, messaging, campaigns, and advertisements designed to energize clients’ known audiences and lead generators as well as to attract new direct-to-consumer demographics based on extensive research and testing.

• Serve as the primary producer, copywriter, and copyeditor for all marketing content on behalf of clients, strategically combining both traditional and online media resources in order to maximize and reinforce cost-effective outreach and impact.

• Develop a distinct public voice for clients by ghostwriting bold social media posts and blogs; organically relating clients’ brand copy and messaging to local and global activity so as to substantially increase fan engagement, positive brand awareness, loyalty, and new followers.

• Make convincing pitches for new ideas and secure new accounts and campaigns for both existing clients and prospective business.

• Identify and implement ways for clients to have productive and long-term affiliations with large scale, multi-layered, popular community endeavors by coordinating and interweaving relevant and compelling brand associations with fun and invaluable sponsorship support.

• Direct, edit, and promote stylized yet unscripted client interview videos crafted to minimize the distance between viewer and subject through sincere dialogue laced with playful copy infusion that underscores each client’s unique brand identity and value with broad appeal.

• Provide voiceover, original music scoring, event emcee, and showcase planning services for clients as requested and recommended.

Investigator

June 2006 - March 2011

San Francisco City Attorney’s Office

San Francisco, California

• Investigated incidents, conditions, and related matters on behalf of the City’s welfare, interests, and all of its departments.

• Produced findings to assist Deputy City Attorneys in determining whether the bases for legal actions involving the City were justified, unwarranted, or excessive for the purposes of defending the City in court against lawsuits and asserting restitution as needed.

• Promoted changes in City and State policy for the public good by proactively exposing entities, businesses, and practices that affect the City adversely in an effort to create sound legal challenges and injunctions to abate such negative effects.

• Uncovered relevant affiliations, connections, witnesses, assets, evidence, documentation, and materials through research and investigations.

• Identified, tracked down, backgrounded, and obtained recorded interviews with reluctant and elusive witnesses and related parties.

• Wrote reports and summaries of findings requiring sophisticated analysis while synthesizing complex, subtle, and sometimes conflicting information espousing multiple interpretations and theories to provide attorneys with meaningful evidence and compelling arguments to be used as the foundation for legal actions made on behalf of the City and all of its departments.

• Strategized and worked with attorneys on case direction as well as how to best incorporate and leverage the information coalesced through investigations.

Complaint Officer & Capital Improvements Coordinator

May 1999 - June 2006

San Francisco Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Board

San Francisco, California

• Counseled the public regarding its recourse under the City’s intricate, contentious, and highly interpretive rent control and eviction law.

• Explained the many ways in which this law may be legally exercised through the Board within the context of other applicable State and City regulations and gave advice concerning the potential ramifications of such actions as it related to each requestor's specific circumstances.

• Served as a liaison between the Board, landlords, tenants, and representatives to coordinate hearing proposals of rent adjustments based on capital improvements, operating & maintenance expenses, and other special circumstances as allowed by the rent ordinance.

• Investigated, applied law, and wrote reports based on tenants’ claims of wrongful evictions and other ordinance infraction allegations.

• Worked with senior staff and administrative law judges to interpret, incorporate, and apply changes in the law with existing office policy.

• Designed and transitioned modifications in office administration to improve public service and assisted the executive director in the facilitation of inter-departmental projects.

• Represented the Board at public information forums and related events and responded to public requests for information.

Cultural Facilities Manager

January 1998 - May 1999

San Francisco Arts Commission

San Francisco, California

• Directed all aspects of facilities management including the administration of City funds and supervision of the non-profit organizations running the City’s then four Cultural Centers.

• Selected by the Mayor to be the first person to hold this position and entrusted to create and implement the monitoring systems used to ensure the Centers’ accountability for the significant influx of then new City funds, earmarked to support the Centers’ community services.

• Conducted regular and ongoing financial, performance, and managerial audits of the Centers; devising procedural solutions as warranted.

• Developed, negotiated, and enforced budgets, leases, guidelines, and policies for the Centers to be in accordance with City and Commission requirements and initiatives.

• Wrote minutes for committee meetings and comprehensive reports for the Mayor’s Office to demonstrate the Centers' legislative compliance, improvement regarding public service, and overall progress.

• Acted as project manager for facility renovations and related structural improvements at the Centers; interfaced with City departments, vendors, and contractors on a daily basis to coordinate projects on behalf of all four Centers.

• Monitored community support board meetings and served as a liaison between the neighborhoods, the Centers, and the City to facilitate, determine, and establish best practices; diffusing the politically sensitive and oftentimes volatile conflicts that would consistently occur between the disparate stakeholders involved through mediation, negotiation, and directives as necessary.

Special Assistant

March 1996 - January 1998

San Francisco Mayor’s Office

San Francisco, California

• Provided administrative support simultaneously for the Director of Finance, the Director of Legislative Affairs/Board of Supervisors Liaison, the Director of Public Finance, and the Mayor's budget/policy analysts.

• Reviewed, approved, and processed personnel requisitions for all City departments under the direction of the analysts.

• Wrote, edited, and prepared a variety of fiscal and policy documents as well as office letters for the Mayor to review and sign.

• Prioritized and coordinated meetings with City department heads, members of the Board of Supervisors, and the public for the Directors.

• Fielded constituent suggestions, complaints, and requests for information.

Public Relations Specialist

Fall 1994 - Spring 1995

Heyday Records

San Francisco, California

• Promoted artist releases to the press and radio stations across the country for an independent record label.

• Organized, scheduled, and stage managed record release concerts at busy San Francisco club venues.

• Acted as a creative consultant for the president regarding design for the company’s website, albums, and other related projects.

• Reviewed bands and artist recordings and made recommendations for the label to consider signing certain acts.

Education & Honors

Oberlin College

Oberlin, Ohio

January 1989 - May 1992

Graduated with a B.A. in Psychology with Honors.

Overall G.P.A.: 3.54 & Major G.P.A.: 3.76

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Summer 1991

Completed a full summer session semester.

Overall G.P.A.: 3.83

Honors

Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society, Genevieve Park Memorial Scholarship, Herndon United Methodist Church Scholarship, New York Avenue Womens Association Scholarship

Psychology Honors Thesis Writer & Researcher

February 1991 - May 1992

Oberlin College

Oberlin, Ohio

• Conceived, created, and executed an original and unprecedented experiment designed to elicit compelling evidence suggesting both the existence and scope of mental imagery as a viable and distinct form of cognitive processing after being recruited, accepted, and distinguished by the Psychology Department as one of only five students for its 1991-1992 honors program.

• Incorporated implicit, unconscious memory testing methods to bolster evidentiary arguments for the independent existence of mental imagery through a means that could not easily be refuted or explained by other traditionally accepted amodal or solely linguistic code forms of representation, making it the first study to do so in the cognitive science literature.

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