WE ARE YOUR ALDER.
Alder & Co. is a women-owned-and-led marketing agency, driven by the purpose of advancing the adoption of climate technologies until they become universal. We work tirelessly for our clients and our planet, with a real belief that our efforts can transform the narrative around climate change. We are driven, daring, curious and loving, committed to standing strong in the face of adversity.
Melanie Adamson
Founder & CEO
Melanie spent the last 20 years researching audiences, building multi-channel plans, and developing sound strategies that have earned her the recognition of her colleagues as a marketing expert among business and consumer industries. Through the partnership of executive and creative staff, she leads the Alder creative and strategic teams to produce successful and effective marketing deliverables for clients. When Mel isn’t running Alder, she loves cooking for family and friends, and sharing stories with a glass of French or Spanish red wine.
Manda Borealis
Creative Director
Manda is the head of Alder’s creative department and the driving force behind our disruptive brand strategies. With 18 years of experience in digital design, she leads her team with creative sophistication—a high-level understanding of the strategic approach and a discerning eye for the smallest of details. She partners closely with our clients to identify multi-media marketing plans that are honest, purposeful and impactful, then works directly with her creative team to bring those plans to life. You can usually find Manda screen-printing in her basement or hiking a Pacific Northwest trail with her daughter and their corgi-sidekick, Bodhi.
Lauren Burns
Client Director
Bringing over two decades of strategic communications leadership expertise from Fortune 100 companies and top-tier agencies, Lauren is dedicated to catalyzing positive change within the thriving climate tech sector. Serving as principal for all client efforts, Lauren leverages her extensive knowledge and business acumen to help propel the next-generation of innovative thinking into impactful brands that have the power to scale and effect positive change. As a mother to two young girls, Lauren strives to leverage her work to instill values of sustainability and possibility to those she hopes to influence most. Outside of work, Lauren digs all the time she can get with her family whether it’s cooking, skiing or a hike with their Bernese Mountain Dog, Winnie.
KiEffer Katz
Senior Writer
Kieffer is an exuberantly creative writer with an analytical mindset and a decade of experience telling stories for new and established brands. From writing clear, concise language product descriptions for consumer testing to enticing customer interest with more evocative prose in ads and marketing materials, he expertly balances form and function in service of greater understanding. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he spends his free time wrangling toddlers, reading science fiction novels, trying to recognize conifers, and worrying that his houseplants are mad at him.
Whitney McGoram
PR Lead
Whitney is a senior strategic communications professional with a master’s degree in PR and more than a decade of agency experience. She excels at telling clients’ stories in creative ways that gain the attention of top media outlets, allowing clients to achieve their business goals. Whitney’s media relations background spans a range of industries, from B2B tech to hospitality to healthcare. Through her work with Alder, Whitney is focused on using her skills and relationships to help grow climate tech organizations that are actively making the world a better place.
Toby Obayashi
Digital Marketing Specialist
Toby brings a growth mindset and passion for impact-driven B2B marketing in the climate space. He relishes his involvement in brand awareness initiatives for clients, and has honed his skills in search engine marketing (SEM). He understands that bridging the gap between products and customers through trust, creativity, and thoughtfulness is key to successful brand building. When he is not scaling clients’ brands, he enjoys traveling to National Parks, watching his Alma Mater’s football games, and playing soccer. Toby graduated from the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business with a focus in Marketing.
Cami Marez
Digital Marketing Account Manager
Cami has worked in B2B and B2C marketing for the last six years. She has experience in various industries, including healthcare, fintech and climate tech. Although she’s a jack of all trades in marketing, she especially enjoys helping companies build their marketing strategies from scratch and working on demand generation to bring new customers to their doorstep. When Cami isn’t working with clients to help their visions come to life, she’s busy traveling the world, trying new foods and plotting new ways to make friends.
Rian Murnen
Digital Independent Consultant
Rian is focused on solving user experience and user interface problems in order to help people access, understand, and take action on information. With over 20 years of design and development experience, he bridges the gap between design and engineering teams. When away from his desk, he is rediscovering the universe with his kids.
Our Trusted Advisors
Bettina Grab
Company builder & B2B growth leader
Bettina is a company builder, B2B growth expert and startup advisor obsessed with using climate technologies to make an impact. As Alder’s Partner and Chief Growth Officer from 2021 to 2024, Bettina played a key role in driving the agency’s growth, overseeing business development and marketing functions, as well as advising clients on effective growth strategies. She’s a thought leader and speaker on go-to-market strategies for climate tech companies and mentors startups through Third Derivative, the Unreasonable Group and Cleantech Open. Before pivoting her career to climate tech, Bettina led B2B marketing efforts for global tech and services companies for over 15 years. She’s an avid yogi, hiker and baker of German sourdough bread.
Josh Keeling
SVP, Product & Market Development, UtilityAPI
Josh leads teams responsible for developing, designing, and deploying turnkey virtual power plant offerings for utilities and wholesale markets. He is a thought leader in DER integration and has conceived several industry-leading programs in distributed flexibility. Often called to speak on topics such as FERC Order 2222 implementation, interconnection reform, and integrated distribution planning, he teaches the next generation of energy managers at his alma mater, Portland State University. He is a voting member of the Regional Technical Forum, RMI’s eLab Initiative faculty, and an active contributor to various standard-making bodies around grid integration and flexible loads.
Carrie Maultsby-Lute
Head of Partnerships, Oakland Campus, Northeastern University
Carrie is passionate about nurturing the next generation of sustainability leaders. She is the Director of the Center for Transformative Action at Mills College at Northeastern University and teaches marketing courses at Mills College at Northeastern University and at Presidio Graduate School of Business. In 2021, Carrie was awarded a Love Takes Action award by New York Life for her role in supporting small businesses in the community during COVID. Carrie has partnered with over 130+ organizations to discuss solutions and build models for combatting long standing societal problems. Carrie has a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Mills College.
Kristina McMillan
Co-Founder, Argyle Earth
Kristina is a published thought leader with over 20 years of startup experience. She helped build TOPO, a sales and marketing tech firm, which was sold to Gartner in 2019.
Emily Pearce
Director of Client Engagement,
Evergreen Consulting Group
Emily comes from energy efficiency stock. With almost 20 years working in energy efficiency and business in both commercial and residential markets leading strategic initiatives for utility partners including developing and designing innovative programs, introducing new technology to the marketplace and implementing programs across the U.S. Emily brings her partnership, business development and strategy chops to partners, clients and teams with passion and exuberance every day.