MY STORY
VALERIE JANA
Valerie Jana is a freelance Creative Director and curator working at the intersection of brand, culture, place and story. With a background spanning fashion, hospitality, PR, marketing, sales and creative direction, she has a particular instinct for seeing what makes a person, brand or place worth noticing, then finding ways to bring that quality forward.
Her work centers on independent businesses and female-founded brands, helping founders turn their point of view into a visual world, a memorable experience and the right relationships. She is also the founder of Locals World, a growing platform dedicated to the people, places and independent businesses that make somewhere feel like somewhere
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN WHAT'S BEHIND THINGS.
The person behind the business. The reason something exists. The feeling you get when you walk through the door.
I grew up in a small town where you knew the people behind the businesses you loved. The shop owner knew your name. The restaurant had a story. A business wasn't just a business. It had a family, a history and a personality.
I didn't have a word for it then, but I was paying attention.
Later, I moved through fashion, hospitality, PR, marketing, sales and creative work. Different industries, different roles, but I kept finding myself drawn to the same thing: the story underneath the product.
Who is the woman behind this brand?
Why did she make this?
What makes this place worth going to?
Where does this brand belong?
Those questions eventually became the foundation of my work.
The belief
Locals World was created from my belief that the future belongs to brands that feel human. In a world dominated by mass production and endless noise, people are craving connection. They want to know who made something, why it exists, and what makes it meaningful.
Locals World is where I get to act on that belief: a media outlet built around discoverability. Interviews with the people behind the brands. Local go-to lists and features. Blogs that tell the story before the sale. Over time, it's growing into a home for local PR, advertising, and affiliate partnerships — all built around the same idea: shining a light on the people, stories, and ideas that deserve to be discovered.
THEN THERE WAS MY GRANDFATHER.
My grandfather was an artisan and the owner of a restaurant in Greenport, Long Island. When he became sick, I found something in his journals that stayed with me. He had written about closing the doors to his dreams, including closing the restaurant.
It made me think about how much more a small business holds than what it sells. A place can become part of someone's life. A business can carry a family's history. A product can hold someone's years of work, taste and imagination.
And when that disappears, you lose more than a storefront.
That experience made me pay even closer attention to the people building things around me, and to how important it is that good businesses are seen, understood and remembered.
It's a big part of why I created Locals World. And it's still at the heart of the work I do today.
Locals World was created to help you keep your doors open.
I BELIEVE THE PERSON BEHIND THE BRAND SHOULD BE IN THE ROOM.
I work with female-owned and independent brands to bring more of the person behind the brand into the business. Not just the logo or the website, but the point of view, personality, story and intention that make the brand different in the first place.
I believe the most memorable brands feel like someone. They have a perspective. They make you curious. You remember how they made you feel.
My role is to help uncover what is already there and translate it into the visual world, creative direction, content, strategy and relationships that make the brand feel unmistakably itself.
Sometimes that means a photoshoot or a new visual direction. Sometimes it means stepping back and figuring out what the brand is really trying to say. And increasingly, it means looking beyond the brand itself and asking where it belongs.
The right retailer. The right hotel. The right destination. The right collaboration. The right community.
That's where my creative background meets my experience in PR, marketing, sales and partnerships.
I'M A CREATIVE MIND.
I'm not interested in making brands fit a formula or turning every business into the same polished version of itself.
I'm interested in the hearts and hands behind the business: the independent designer, the local shop owner, the artisan, the woman building something from scratch, the place with an actual sense of character.
There is something worth protecting there, but also something worth making visible.
That's the work I want to do. Shine a light on what's already there, help tell the story, and create the conditions for the right people to discover it.
AND THEN THERE'S LOCALS WORLD.
Locals World grew out of that same instinct. I wanted to create a world around the people, places and independent businesses that make somewhere feel like somewhere.
It's a place to discover the women behind brands, local businesses, designers, makers, destinations and the people creating culture in their own communities.
By Valerie Jana is where I bring that perspective into my creative work with founders and brands. Locals World is where I get to explore and build the larger world around it.
It's all connected. The brands I'm drawn to, the places I want to explore, the people I want to introduce and the stories I want to tell.
I'm building a career around making those connections.
EXPERIENCE BEHIND THE WORK
My background spans PR, marketing, fashion, hospitality, wholesale, sales and creative direction, giving me a pretty unusual view of how a brand moves from idea to audience, and from audience to real-world relationships.
I've worked across fashion, hospitality, sustainability, local business and lifestyle, including roles with established companies as well as independent founders and emerging brands.
I hold degrees in Public Relations and Hotel, Restaurant & Tourism Management, with a minor in Business.
I'm also the founder of Locals World and Locals Closet, two projects that grew directly out of my interest in independent brands, local culture, fashion and community.