hi, i'm tierra

I'm a Marketing Strategist in Kansas City, Missouri. I may have given you advice about natural hair care on my YouTube channel or you might have seen some of my content on the PKD Foundation's social media accounts. You may even found me because you randomly Googled "living in Haikou, China." Whatever the case may be, I'm glad you're here!

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I began my journey in content creation and digital marketing in 2014. I was a Radio Announcer at Northwest Missouri State University using the campus station's Twitter account to engage with our growing community. I would tweet asking listeners to send us song recommendations for a shout-out. Students loved hearing their names announced on the radio and this increased listenership. At the time, I had no idea that this was social media marketing and the beginning of my career. After graduating, I put a pause on on-air announcing and decided to take a gap year.

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I spent the next year in Haikou, China teaching English. There, I started a YouTube channel with an accompanying Instagram profile to document my experience living in China. I posted my first YouTube video on January 7, 2016, using an old Dell laptop camera and no editing software. I had zero expectations of getting views on it. Five years later, that video has over 147K views, 2.2K likes, 500+ comments and it continues to get over 7,000 hours of watch time per month.

After coming back to the U.S. I moved to New York for a job opportunity. Upon arrival, I was diagnosed with alopecia areata. Yep, you read that correctly, my hair started falling out in chunks and I'm telling potential employers about it. My purpose is that I turned this lemon into lemonade by pivoting my YouTube channel and Instagram into a space about wellness and natural hair. That YouTube channel now has a 95.7% like vs. dislike rate, and my Instagram page maintains a 6.5% engagement rate.

I taught myself photography, videography, and later graphic design and found my passion in creating content and getting to know my target audience. Using my ability to understand people and what resonates with them, I realized that I could play the role of storyteller for other brands.

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Since posting that first YouTube video, I've accomplished a lot, including appearing on the Essence Magazine website for my personal brand to raising over $40,000 for the PKD Foundation via one digital campaign. 

My favorite part of digital marketing is creating content that makes people feel something. The digital space, specifically social media, can be negative but I also believe that it can be an environment for positivity, education, and inspiration. I love being able to create and market something that ignites the latter.