_ Voices

'[Gilian] knows how to be still and observe her surroundings. She has an intense curiosity about the essential nature of things and how they relate to each other. All this—plus her passion, intellect and dedication—makes her a wonderful asset"

L aura Silverman, Founder at The Outside Institute on Field Notes

"Gilian created a lot of value for our business by speaking to our community and distilling their thoughts into an actionable brand plan. She is professional, organized, a pleasure to work with, and does what she says she will do, according to schedule. Thank you Gilian!”

Laura Schubert, CEO and Cofounder at FUR

"Gilian… was instrumental in starting an art gallery with me ... From [defining] our mission, reaching out to artists, crafting press releases, organizing events, and being a total hands-on team player, The Peanut Gallery could not have taken off without Gilian's dedication."

Damien Saatdjian, Art Director at The Museum of Modern Art

"Gilian is a smart, creative and strategic thinker. She is proactive, solutions-oriented and passionate about everything that she does. She is also reliable and conscientious and I am confident that she is going to go on to achieve amazing things... I couldn't recommend her more highly!"

Sean Bonthuys, Senior Director Strategy & Innovation, Energy Portfolio - PepsiCo

"Gilian is skilled ... She really helped us solidify our brand messaging and mission. Her work is still the foundation our brand is built on. I think she is particularly skilled at transforming abstract goals in clear + succinct brand identities that naturally lead in to engaging content and visual identity. We loved working with Gil."

Alex Fine, Co-Founder and CEO at Dame Products

"Gilian is deeply thoughtful, artistic, and strategic in her approaches to understanding and approaching complexity. In the most gentle and natural way, she can flip a previously unquestioned way of understanding a problem on its head and re-frame, backing it up with creative, practical ways to troubleshoot and explore new approaches... She took the time to seriously learn about and engage in the complex legal issues we are up against and understand our organization's mission, scope, and culture. Nearly immediately and in typical Gilian style, she was on the same page, responding with a comprehensive framework to think through practical next steps. Like always, it always an extremely helpful conversation that pushed us to the next level and left us inspired, excited to pursue many new ideas and next steps."

Adina Appelbaum, Senior Attorney at Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition (CAIR) Coalition

“We engaged Gilian to develop a communications strategy for us. She spoke to a variety of our customers to create a comprehensive summary of the customer journey while also giving us clear and actionable guidelines for communications strategy going forward. On top of that, her work is very organized, and professional and she sticks to her committed timelines. Her research was helpful for us to lay the groundwork for future brand building and we found it very thought provoking.”

Lillian Tung, Co-Founder at Fur

"Gilian … makes good things better...[she] has such an interesting and unexpected perspective that I have always come away energized and feeling that I have learned something new…her ideas, discipline… and quietly authoritative leadership style make her highly effective and a real pleasure to work alongside. I highly recommend you add Gilian to your team, you'll all be better for it."

Patrick O'Hara, Strategy Leader at Bloomberg LP + Co

"As a copywriter, working off of an exceptionally researched and highly-detailed brand deep dive is a dream. Gillian's customer research and presentations of brand architecture/communications for our mutual wellness/beauty client is exactly this. In addition to her invaluable work, Gillian is a clear and patient educator to the entire team - ensuring each member fully understands all concepts and findings.”

Larisa Makow, Copywriter at Fur

"Gilian … brought insight and innovation to everything … she was also instrumental on a cultural level - committed to building the culture of gyro in many ways, chief among them as one of the founders of our women’s' group, gyro: unbound. She is strong, smart, focused and an asset to any organization she's part of."

Wendy Lurrie, President at gyro

"Highly recommend Gilian … [She] helped us communicate our brand in a more succinct and creative way, capture the essence … and create a roadmap for how and where we market and speak to our people. Gilian is a pleasure to work with, very easygoing, super sharp and would be a great addition to any… discussion."

Julian Levine, Co-Founder at Twice

“Gilian…is an incredible collaborator—a great listener, caring, thoughtful, and thorough, creating clarity and guidance through complex problems, open to conversations and feedback. She has a wealth of knowledge, is eloquently spoken, and always offers a refreshing point of view. Brand strategy can be alienating for clients who haven't gone through a formal branding process before. Gilian is patient and able to explain both the need for, and rationale behind everything she brings to the table.”

Candice Ralph, Designer and Art Director (Independent; Formerly: Mother New York, Droga5, Milk, Wolff Olins, Chobani, COLLINS, Chandelier Creative)

“Gilian is extremely thoughtful, collaborative, and thorough with every project. She always asks the right questions to help guide the work to the best place.”

Marisa Aveling , Writer and Editor (Vogue, Pitchfork, Elle, and more)

"There is a sense of purpose driving Gilian's work- one with focus on delivering the best work…and necessitating of an approach that is proactive, detail-oriented and creative. Taken in combination with her background from top strategic agencies, she was able to lead expansive, challenging and sophisticated global campaigns ….spanning across brand, comms, content and partnership planning. Highly intelligent and articulate, she pursues diversity in her thinking and is fittingly inclusive of others- at gyro she started a club whose focus was to make sure multi-cultural views were represented in a traditional agency. Collaboration comes natural to Gilian, and as a team member she's accountable, positive, and insightful. Each of us benefitted from her presence."

Tim Ryan, Strategist at Sylvain Labs

“Was impressed & appreciative of Gilian's work…She used customer interviews and research to create a brand foundation that translated our loose idea into a tenable brand identity. She was thoughtful throughout the entire process, very effective at translating feedback into an eloquent brand framework, and timely with meeting deliverables based on clearly set expectations. Will work with Gilian again for sure.“

Justin Seidenfeld, Founder at Doris Dev

“I've had the opportunity to work with Gilian and can attest to what a thoughtful and insightful person she is. Gilian is a highly skilled researcher, able to facilitate in depth interviews that get at the mindset of a consumer, and process complex quantitative data that point to broader trends in consumer behavior. She's excellent at weaving together disparate facts, trends, and insights to produce a powerful narrative while leading a room through her in point of view in an engaging way. Gilian is a rare commodity in that she blends in depth brand development capability with a deep understanding of health and wellness. I am further deeply impressed with Gilian's grasp on culture. She knows what's cool and has a really nuanced understanding of the vast amount of emerging, influential sub-cultures. As the health, wellness, naturalist and spiritual categories continue to explode, Gilian is a great resource for any new, growing, or established brands looking to refresh their brand strategy to generate more appeal.“

Dan Spiegel, Co-Founder at Dan + Jason + Co

“I cannot recommend Gilian highly enough to other founders looking to build a strong identity for their brand. Her work … created lasting value for us. To start the project, Gilian interviewed key De Lune stakeholders, conducted customer research, and did an in-depth audit of other brands in our space. Because she took this approach of complete curiosity and receptivity, we were able to avoid getting trapped in preexisting assumptions we had about what our target audience needs to hear in order to understand us. We came away with fresh insights about the motivations of our ideal customer persona. As we progressed through the stages of laying the brand foundation, Gilian matched us with other all-star creative experts to finalize the copywriting, graphic design, and web design. Having her orchestrate the process freed up my time and ensured that all creators involved were speaking the same brand language. This made for a seamless cohesive result across our new packaging, site, and social media presence. Gilian’s process is thoughtful, meticulous, caring, and balanced. She knows how to identify market opportunities for a brand and use white space to the brand’s advantage, while staying true to the original vision of the founding team. She will guide you through the creative process every step of the way and extract the essence of your brand! My team has never before felt so strongly aligned on how we communicate De Lune’s offerings to the world.“

Mimi Millard, Founder at De Lune

“From her thoughtful customer research, Gilian distilled some powerful insights that have helped us shape the direction of our Inheritance Project brand and messaging. As a company offering DEI services, her research and perspective were valuable in helping us determine how to communicate what sets us apart from the crowd. Gilian works with diligence and rigor, and has a talent for synthesizing ideas into powerful statements.“

Mallory Combemale, Co-Founder at Inheritance Project

“It is with gratitude and enthusiasm I recommend Gilian Rappaport's work. As a social impact start-up of passionate co-founders, we were looking for someone who could bring out the spirit and core values of our company. Gillian's work on our brand architecture and strategy was above and beyond. She is the rare professional who can marry a robust research-based approach, pointed intellectual understanding of the industry and cultural pulse, with an intuitive and creative approach to developing the architecture. Her process revealed many invaluable insights about our customers, how to position ourselves, and how to work with creatives moving forward. By expertly incorporating our feedback and knowing when to redirect, we ended up with a solid brand foundation that grounded us in finding the unique and authentic voice for those we mean to serve.”

Ariel Figueroa, Co-Founder at Inheritance Project