My Story
Read my FoundHer Story first — then decide if you'll take my word for it when you book a Strategy Leap Consultation. And when you're ready for the full brand production, the makeover, the event — that's THE LEAP. Like any tiger, I've got to prove my stripes before you go all in.
A Freelance Creative Director for Female-Founded and Local Brands ready to do whatever it takes to put your business in the light it deserves.
I'm Valerie Jana — a Freelance Creative Director, Storyteller, and the Founder of Locals World.
I'm a Freelance Creative Director and founder based between New York and Connecticut. I work with female founders and independent brands, bringing together creative direction, storytelling, content, and strategy to help them build brands that feel unmistakably their own.
I've spent the last decade moving between fashion, hospitality, sustainability, design, marketing, PR, photography, and entrepreneurship — working both inside established companies and building my own platforms, Locals World and Locals Closet.
I'm curious by nature, easily inspired, and probably happiest somewhere between a new city, an interesting conversation, a good photograph, and an idea that hasn't been fully figured out yet.
I'm here to help you figure it out.
No two projects look exactly the same. Depending on what you're building, I might step in to:
Shape the brand — creative direction, visual identity, mood boards, and brand world.
Build the presence — websites, social strategy, digital presence, and launch direction.
Create the visuals — photoshoot production, styling, art direction, and on-set creative direction.
Create the experience — pop-ups, events, hospitality experiences, and destination storytelling.
Develop the idea — helping you take something that exists in your head and turn it into something tangible, cohesive, and ready to share.
Sometimes you need a full creative partner. Sometimes you just need someone to see the vision, give it shape, and make it happen. That's where I come in.
What I Do
About Valerie
I want to help make the world feel a little more connected by helping people find the heart of what they're building.
I grew up curious about the people behind things. I'm from a small town without many franchises, so I experienced business through relationships — you knew the people behind the restaurants, the shops, the places you went. Every business had a family and a history attached to it, and that gave everything a sense of connection.
I'm still that person. During the week you might find me photographing an Airbnb, talking to a shop owner, wandering an artisan market, driving somewhere I've never been, or sitting across from a founder asking why she started. I'm always collecting — people, places, ideas, references, textures, possibilities — and then figuring out how they connect.
My work is about finding that heart and bringing it to the surface through creative direction, strategy, storytelling, content, and a more human approach to PR & marketing.
Pisces Sun, Leo Rising, Cancer Moon, Manifesting Generator, empath since 1996. My favorite artist is Hilma af Klint, whose visionary work was so far ahead of her time, creating new worlds within this one. She was deeply intuitive, curious, and underestimated for much of her life — qualities I find endlessly inspiring. I'm intuitive by nature, curious by default, and always collecting stories, places, people, and ideas. I'm here to help good people find their voice, build businesses with heart, and create things that make us feel a little more connected to one another. That's the world I want to help create.
This is the thread through my work
I've never been interested in staying inside one box. I've worked across creative direction, brand strategy, content, editorial, fashion, hospitality, local business, events, and photography. From the outside, those might look unrelated. To me, they're all the same question: what happens when an idea becomes a world?
Some weeks that means helping a founder understand her own story. Other weeks it's developing the creative direction for a campaign, producing a photoshoot, building the visual world for a new brand, or introducing people to the businesses that make a neighborhood worth discovering. Along the way, that curiosity has taken me into rooms with H&M, Start-up’s, Small Retailers, Lonely Whale, and Auberge Collection hotels — always circling the same question. The medium changes. The work doesn't. I find the story, connect the dots, and make the invisible visible.
I don't believe businesses are just products or services. I believe they're extensions of the people who create them — the hearts and hands behind every product and service. That belief eventually became Locals World.
How Locals World began, Expanding My Horizons and Crossing Borders
When I moved to Miami, I went looking for the feeling I grew up with — I wanted to know who made things, meet the people behind the businesses, find the places that didn't feel mass-produced. Farmers markets became my shopping list. Local makers became my inspiration. Small businesses became stories I wanted to tell.
I wanted to feel at home in a foreign place — the feeling of being in a small town, even though I wasn't. To shop from people who remembered my face or my name, so that I kept coming back as the weeks went by.
Eventually that curiosity turned into Locals World, a media and creative platform built around discoverability — a place to tell the stories behind the brands, people, and ideas worth knowing about. It's still how I approach every project I take on, because I don't just want to help a brand get noticed. I want to help people understand why they should care.
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.
AI-generated camellia for Chanel by artist Leslie David
Opening Doors and Keeping Them Open
My grandfather was an artisan. When he got sick, I found something in his journals that never left me — he had traveled to India looking for answers, and was told that closing the doors to his dreams, including closing his restaurant in Greenport, was part of what had made him sick in the first place.
That story changed something in me. Small businesses close every day, quietly. And when one closes, it's never just a place to buy something — it's a gathering place, a relationship, a piece of someone's imagination made real. That's part of why I started Locals World, and it's still part of why I care so much about the people I work with. I want good ideas to have a chance to stay open.
Locals World was created to help you keep your doors open.
Whether that means selling online for the first time, landing your first retail placement, or just staying visible enough to make it to next season, I want to help you stay standing — to reconnect with your vision, share your story, and build something that reflects who you truly are, so you never have to close the doors on your dream.
My Creative Philosophy
I believe the most powerful brands are built from alignment.
The founder. The story. The strategy. The visuals. The experience.
When all five are telling the same truth, a brand stops feeling like a business and starts feeling like a person you'd want to know.
My role as a Creative Director is to uncover what's already true within a brand and bring it forward with clarity, intention, and beauty — so it's impossible to overlook.
How I Work With Founders
Every collaboration begins with a conversation. I want to understand your story, your vision, what you've built, and what feels missing. The goal isn't to force your business into a formula — it's to discover what makes you different and build a strategy around that.
Sometimes that means refining your brand identity. Sometimes it means producing a photoshoot, launching a collection, creating a website, or designing an unforgettable experience.
From there, we move through a clear path together: a conversation to find your story, a strategy sweep to see what's working and what's missing, and a checklist of where you stand. Whether you're ready to take the leap into full creative direction or just ready to know your next step, I'll hold your hand the whole way through.
It all starts with a Clarity Call — free, no pressure, just a real conversation about where you are and where you want to go.
brand strategy · creative direction · brand storytelling · personal branding · brand identity · female-owned brands · women-owned business · female founder · purpose-driven · local brands · artisan-made · websites · social strategy · photoshoot production · styling · pop-ups · events · mood boarding · vision boarding · retail placement · collection launch
Qualifications
Experience
A decade of cross-industry work in sales, PR, marketing, design, social media, visual storytelling, and brand messaging — across sustainability-focused NGOs, Fortune 500 companies, fashion and lifestyle startups, and government-funded projects. Consulting clients and collaborators have included H&M, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Lonely Whale, KRAVET, and Auberge Collection hotels.
Education
M.A. Design in Sustainability, graduate coursework — Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), 2023
B.S., Public Relations & Hotel, Restaurant, Tourism Management — SUNY Plattsburgh, Cum Laude, 2018
Study Abroad, Business & Marketing — Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, 2017
Certifications
Design Research & Insight Translation, Savannah College of Arts and Design 2023
European Sustainability Hospitality Certificate 2020
Reiki I & II
Transcendental Meditation, Asanas and Pranayama
200+ Hours, Cacao Facilitation
A Note: None of this is really why I do the work. I do it because I've watched what happens when a good idea doesn't get the chance to be seen — and I've watched what happens when it does. Everything above just happens to be where I picked up the tools. My certifications help me dive deep in our sessions, to bring in your higher vision, the heart of the business, and our why.
Book a Clarity Call
Let's talk about where you are, where you want to go, and what the right next step actually looks like for you.