River North is an independent, women-owned strategic communications firm serving small and mid-sized financial services and technology companies — and the leaders behind them.
We work with fintechs, mortgage and blockchain companies, healthcare and law firms, and emerging fund managers who need their reputation to arrive before they do.
Most of our clients are at a moment where visibility stops being optional — a raise, a launch, a regulatory filing, an acquisition, a first year as a public company. That is exactly the moment when a generic agency program does the most damage. Ours starts with what you are actually allowed to say, and builds outward from there.
Every engagement is led by a principal. Every program is built to survive scrutiny — from your general counsel, your board, and the reporters who cover you.
We speak the language of compliance, disclosure and risk — so legal review is a checkpoint, not a rewrite.
The people who pitch your program are the people who run it. No handoff to junior staff after the kickoff.
An independent, women-owned firm — a point of difference that matters to a growing number of our clients.
Our executive team is listed here; senior counsel, media strategists and compliance reviewers round out the wider bench on every engagement.
Kelly has spent more than twenty years in corporate communications, most of it in financial and professional services, where reputations are won and lost on the details. She leads River North’s client work and designs every media program behind it: across fintech, blockchain, legal, private equity, real estate and education finance.
She has personally led every digital asset and blockchain engagement the firm has taken since 2017: years before most agencies would touch the category. Clients come to her for the prestige content approach she built: coverage that establishes authority rather than volume, and the growth that follows from it.
She writes on opinion and events for Grit Daily. She lives in Cutchogue, New York, with her husband Mark, their daughters Margot and Hattie, and their rescue dogs.
Mark leads the operating side of the firm, overseeing how engagements are structured, staffed, measured and reported. He is responsible for ensuring every program is delivered as scoped, on the agreed cadence, with results reported in terms clients can verify. He built his career as a company operator, holding C-suite roles and advising private equity and venture capital firms across corporate operations, revenue growth and cost containment. That operating background shapes how he evaluates client work: against the same standards a board would apply.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School with a combined focus at the Wharton School in finance and venture capital. His writing has appeared in national publications.
We’ll tell you honestly on the first call — including when the answer is no.
