New Year - New Us

Happy New Year!

This being the first official post of 2024 AND my very FIRST ever post on this blog, Welcome!  With Castles and Conch Shells, we hope you'll find us a fun place to come to when you're looking for some new ways of thinking about the world of work, employee engagement and "The employee experience", candidate experience, recruiting wins/fails, and all things people at work, starting work, finding out who you are so you'll know what work you want to do and really.. who you are, what you want and how to get it. 

Here's a little about our "origin story"... 

Back in 2005, I left the comfort and amazing culture at Disney (Castles), after almost 20 years, to pursue my personal life in a new city, get married, and start a family.  I started working for the largest company in Charlotte, which was … banking. This was all I knew... large companies.  So luckily my best friend from High School worked in HR Recruiting and I was in!  This was a stretch from the creative and pioneering world of Disney that I grew up in, but hey...."When In Rome", my Mom would say. 

Banking was a bit more regulated, "excel spreadsheet'ish" than I'd prefer, but I made my way and even grew to enjoy the work.  Needless to say, not the best industry to be in around 2008 however and welcome Layoff #1 in Charlotte.  This lead to 2 other lay offs in Charlotte and I was ready to head back to Disney and get back to my home.  But... this was my new home and I had to make something work.
 
After my 2nd layoff I realized that life outside of Disney was unsafe and lacked the culture, training, leadership and opportunity that I lived in for over 20 years.  So in conversations with an old friend who I'd met during the opening of Castaway Cay, Disney's private island, we talked about starting a company (Conch Shells).

I was looking for a new opportunity to flex some of the creative muscle that I missed from my "Disney Days" and she wanted a partner to grow a cause marketing company with... and this is where Cranberry Way started. 

Cranberry Way did some pretty cool things and enabled us to really get innovative and creative in how to inspire activism and build awareness for local and national non-profits.  We built programs for deaf and hard of hearing kids through campaigns like  - "30 Second of Silence" and a unique twist on National Earmuff Day.  We got the Marquette University, Weather Channel, Anderson Cooper, Good Morning America, LL Bean and the late great Al Jarreau involved to help raise awareness for the deaf and hard of hearing community in the Wisconsin area.  Then we got our big shot - the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week - Swim event in Miami Beach.  We produced an event - a series of Pop Up Boutiques in South Beach working with the Swimsuit designers and bringing awareness to the Ocean, through bringing together local non profits -Surfrider Foundation, and national programs, One World One Ocean, and Blue Marble Project.  We had a blast and loved bringing the worlds causes out into the public in our creative and innovative ways..... but just as we were getting our feet dug into the IMG world and be the "official cause marketing partner" for the worldwide event, my partner decided to 'go back to work'.  I was bummed to say the least.  We had worked so hard to get the eyes and ears of the worldwide producers and, we didn't get to see that come to fruition.

I also returned to the "real world" in 2014 for a few years, only to find myself again, needing to get away from corporate America, bad leadership and go back to where I can bring that unique magic wand to the next leader, company and/ or organization that needed my unique set of skills - but on my watch, under my leadership; so I came back to Cranberry Way. 

We kept going and we continued to do more work for local programs in the Charlotte area. focusing on the homelessness and housing crisis, marketing for organizations that needed that spark of magic.  This fed me, however I knew that with my background at Disney, I should be doing more with what I had formal expertise in.  So I started to find a way to pivot Cranberry Way to be more focus on Corporate Culture - like I experienced and had experience in shaping at Disney.

This led to a few more years of searching, discerning, and experiencing the "big shift" in our worlds even before 'the pandemic".  In 2019 I lost my Mom, and then right after in 2020 everyone's life changed, I was convinced even more that I wanted to help reshape the world that we were seeing come out of the pandemic.  Cranberry Way was not set up to be an HR Consulting company, it was a Cause Marketing company, and so I knew we needed to rebrand... and we were already behind the 8-ball.

So here we are, 2024, after almost 4 years of trying and retrying, and searching, drafting, brainstorming, over thinking, over analyzing, and dreaming a bit, I'm proud to say, finally that Cranberry Way will be officially rebranding as Castaway & Company this year.

"Castaway" will always remind us that we came from an organization flowing with Disney magic and also refers to that beautiful Bahamian island, where I spent 6 months living, and opening more than 25 years ago to open for the Disney Cruise Line (DCL).  It also refers to the amazing experience in launching the DCL culture both Nationally and Internationally.

"& Company​" means that we'll always find partners and teammates to join in with us on this adventure.    

​Castaway&Company will be about Culture Architecture, Organizational Health and Wellness, and the Employee Experience in how to attract, hire, excite and retain the great assets that companies have and how to ensure a winning combination of performance, passion and purpose. 

Again, Welcome!  We hope you enjoy what we're doing and would love to hear from you if you have anything you'd like to read about.