CAREER OBJECTIVE — Cathryn Jakobson Ramin

After four decades as an investigative journalist, and two best-selling non-fiction books in the healthcare space, I've turned to supporting the development of young companies, typically as a contract-based storyteller, relationship builder and strategist. My ability to rapidly grasp and articulate complex concepts, both in writing and in oral communication, translates well in the entrepreneurial space, with special expertise in the areas of healthcare, arts education, design and medicine. I'm deadline-driven and accustomed to quickly absorbing new information and ideas.

Here’s a link to my resumé.

Here’s a link to my more comprehensive website.

Project: 1stDibs

Introspective Magazine/1stDibs, NY, NY— Strategic Editorial, Mar 2019 - Present

Research, writing and image-sourcing, focused on important figures in the design world, to create strategic editorial content for 1stDibs' on-line magazine.

Jay Jeffers Designs for the Modern (Affluent) Family

When Jay Jeffers was a preteen back in Plano, Texas, he used the money he made working at Del’s Burgers to buy subscriptions to Architectural Digest and GQ. By 14, he dreamed of becoming a painter or a Broadway song-and-dance man. Instead, he listened to his mother and pursued a dual degree in international business and marketing at the University of Texas. After college, intending to get into advertising, he moved to San Francisco. He waited tables at Zuni Cafe until, at 23, he got a job in the marketing department of the Gap, Inc.

Why the ‘Fantasists’ behind Fisher Weisman Made the Leap to Mexico

Viewed from the ancient pavers on Calle Recreo, one of San Miguel de Allende’s best-preserved streets, the facade of Casa Acanto is plain and unassuming. But when Jeffry Weisman flings open the double doors, he reveals a patio and courtyard of heart-stopping beauty. Towering over us, just beyond the outdoor living room’s invitingly arranged seating, are three 125-year-old jacaranda trees. With winter approaching, their foliage is chartreuse, but in the spring, their blossoms are so brilliantly lavender that visitors think they’re fake.

Joel Escalona Finds Furniture Inspiration in Mexico City's Back Alleys

In the triangle that lies between Chapultepec Park and the stately boulevards and Art Nouveau mansions of La Condesa, Joel (pronounced “Ho-el”) Escalona has his studio. Reaching it means climbing a quivering spiral staircase to the fourth floor. As Escalona answers the door, he runs a hand through hair that looks as if it had already seen a long day. Then he opens his fist to reveal, fresh out of his new 3-D printer, a tiny maquette of a tiered glass bowl that the Libbey Glass Company will soon manufacture by the thousands.

Project : Aura Frame

Content and Marketing Strategist, Jan 2019 - May 2019

Content creation, expanded marketing strategy, interfaced with production teams.

(This content is no longer on line, and is published in full here.)

Finally, After Three Decades of Trying…the Perfect Gift

For the 30 years of our marriage, my husband has asked me to manage a task that has traumatized him since childhood. I am in charge of buying gifts for his mother. As a newlywed, I embraced this challenge. I picked out designer handbags, belts and scarves from the best stores, seeing to it that they were wrapped beautifully, and delivered in prestigious shopping bags. My mother-in-law loved the shopping bags, but the gifts themselves were always returned, within days and sometimes within hours.

Towards the end of the first decade, I suggested that we stick to Hallmark cards and flowers. But my husband, a dutiful and loving only child, made it clear that he was not going to take that guilt trip. And so it was, last summer, when our cruise ship docked in Denmark, that two of our eight precious hours on shore were dedicated to selecting a blue-and-white salad bowl in his mother’s Royal Copenhagen china pattern.

I thought we’d nailed it, but — no. The bowl was too fancy. Since it was impractical to return this purchase to Denmark, it was dispatched to a closet, one filled with other rejects, and stacks of classy shopping bags.

In response, I announced my retirement from this spousal duty. But when the holidays came around, the question arose once more: What to get the woman who returns everything?

Inspired, I pointed to the Aura Frame in ivory with rose gold trim, in a place of honor on our kitchen counter. I’d already bought three frames--one for us, and one for each of our adult sons. In an organizational tsunami, I’d sent a thousand of our aging snapshots---dating from the days before digital--to be scanned to a hard drive. Then, using the Aura app, I uploaded those photos to all three Aura Frames. 

The vintage pictures were a treat, but we especially loved using the Aura app to gift images that had been taken minutes earlier. In the past, such pictures, attached to emails and texts, or posted on Instagram, would have disappeared into the ether. But once they were uploaded to the Aura Frame, they remained in our lives. 

His mother wanted nothing to do with technology, but with Aura, I pointed out, she wouldn’t have to lift a finger. She could sit back and enjoy the ever-changing show, which we could upload from our own mobile devices.

The frame, presented in its handsome box, did not go back. Instead, it quickly became the beloved center of her life. 

My husband scanned some of the pictures she’d stored away in boxes, and added them to the frame, giving her a precious window into her past. The fresh images we send so easily allow her to feel more connected. Almost daily, she tells us that the Aura Frame is the best present she’s ever received, and really good company. She adores the size and brilliant clarity of the Aura display, which is kind to aging eyes.

In the five months since the frame arrived, she’s told everyone -- friends, her hairdresser, the person sitting beside her on a coffee shop stool, and apparently the refrigerator repairman -- to replace their static, dusty picture frames and messy albums with Aura Frames of their own.

As Mother’s Day approaches, we’re buying her another Aura Frame, this one for her bedroom. Each morning, she’ll wake up to our smiling faces on the new limited edition soft blue Seaglass model. Another gift-giving problem solved!

Share the Love

We’ve all become accustomed to sharing our favorite pictures from our mobile devices, through emails and texts.  But what happens to those pictures after you receive them? Unless you take the cumbersome steps required to save them to your camera roll, you’ll never see them again!  

 My Aura Smart Frame has neatly resolved that problem, not only for me, but for my extended family.  We’ve all got frames, and we’ve all invited each other to join the Aura app. (This takes two seconds.) It’s so much fun to wake up to a new image from someone’s graduation or summer holiday.

As a matter of fact, I’m writing this from Portugal, where my husband and I are celebrating our 30th anniversary. I just clicked the checkbox in the Aura app that will send a classic image to each of our kids’ frames. There’s an eight-hour time difference, so when I set the picture it to display instantly at 11 pm my time, our sons will see us, their aging, but still fit parents, hiking up another impressive hill in Lisbon, when they open their eyes in the morning in California.

When we return home, we’ll find a bunch of new pictures, sent to our frame by my brothers and sister, who now have frames of their own. In fact, my brothers love their “home” frames so much that they’ve bought them for their offices, ridding their desks and credenzas of all that dusty-picture-frame clutter. It’s so great to be able to watch my nieces and nephews grow up, in real time – and to know that I’ll have those images forever. Even if we live 3,000 miles away from each other and can’t always show up for birthday parties and barbecues, Aura allows us to stay in touch.

Our family network is growing, by the way. My aunt is about to receive an Aura Smart Frame for her 95th birthday. We’ll deliver it pre-loaded with our favorite family pictures, which feature the massive Thanksgiving get-together she’s arranged for more than 60 years. My cousins will download the Aura app, so that they can send their mom pictures, instantly, from anywhere in the world – or from right around the corner. This summer, my cousin’s daughter is getting married, and instead of taking orders for prints, or sending pictures through email, the wedding photos will go straight to Aura, where we can all enjoy them in a brilliantly clear HD Smart Display, in a spacious 8 X 12 format.  

One other thing: In the past, many people who have owned digital picture frames equipped with USB flash drives have been disappointed in their performance. I get that: I was one of the disgusted customers who tossed an unattractive and incredibly dumb frame into the recycling bin.

Until you see the Aura Smart Frame at work, it can be hard to understand how different this user experience really is.  Once you download the Aura app,  you’re all set for continual real-time sharing, with unlimited free storage, from anywhere in the world.  And the frame itself is gorgeous – a wonderful addition to any décor. (My aunt’s getting the “seaglass” color, which will look terrific in her pretty living room.) Aura has allowed my close-knit family to become even more connected.  And I know it will do the same for yours.

Just Like Being There

I have too many travel pictures.  Since I went digital, almost twenty years ago, reducing the cost of my photography habit to nothing, I’ve clicked the shutter obsessively. My husband says I go overboard in the presence of birds, flowers, ferns and lichens, and also, dogs. He prefers to take pictures of me posed in front of various monuments, especially if he can arrange to have the monument appear to be growing out of my head.  

In the old days, after a trip, I’d pick out the best pictures and have one or two of them professionally printed and framed. But my house has very few walls, and long ago, I ran out of hanging space. 

Most of those glorious images disappeared into my camera roll, where they were rapidly buried beneath pictures of my broken kitchen faucet, my dog’s rash, and the hangtag on a dress I hoped to find in the right size online.  The only time I’d look at them was when I was bored silly on an airplane.  

Last winter, everything changed, when I finally upgraded my iPhone. Suddenly, I had creative control. The pictures I captured with that half-inch thick slice of steel and glass were better than those I’d managed with high-end photography equipment banging against my rib cage. I could be surreptitious, appearing to check my email as I grabbed a great shot of a woman digging into a pastry that matched her lipstick color perfectly, or a shy bird that, in the absence of a clacking shutter, was willing to stick around for a series of close-ups.

There was a problem: My iPhone desperately needed a partner. The Aura Frame entered my life just in time.  At 8 X 12 inches, with 2,048 x 1,536 resolution, everything was crisp and clear. Aura’s ambient lighting technology made the pictures looked better than they did on my phone -- and much better than they did on my laptop.

Finally, I felt like I was seeing these images as they were meant to be seen.  And that means that I’m taking more pictures than ever.

With the Aura Frame, that’s no problem -- it can accept an unlimited number of images, making the kitchen counter not only a place where I drink my coffee and eat my granola, but also where I relish memories of the extraordinary rain forest in New Zealand, last March, where I photographed ferns to my heart’s content.

It’s true that my New Zealand pictures are in random rotation with other life events. Next up could be my son’s first birthday party, some 28 years ago, if Aura’s algorithm sees fit. There’s a solution:  Since I love seeing pictures of my most recent trip,  I’m thinking of getting them a dedicated frame.  Then, I’ll upload pictures from my mobile device while I’m still on the road, and come home to immediate gratification.  What could be more beautiful?

Project: Fully

Content and Marketing Strategist, Jan 2019 - May 2019

Content creation, expanded marketing strategy, interfaced with production teams.

That Cushy Desk Chair May Be Your Back's Worst Enemy

Finally, it’s gone. My big, state-of-the-art chair – the one with all the levers and sliders and knobs that was supposed to banish my back pain? I fired it. I replaced it with something small, sleek and Scandinavian, called an Iloa. It’s a stool, on wheels. I’m not saying that it’s magic, but it might be.

I should back up. The chair that I just made redundant wasn’t my first. If I remember correctly, it was my fifth, each purchase meticulously researched and custom-ordered, with a single goal: To sit comfortably for hours in front of my computer monitor, and not be miserable afterward. 

With the help of some really smart people at Fully, a furniture company that is dedicated to the principles of active sitting, I realized that I had the whole thing wrong. I’d been searching for a chair that did the work for me. I wanted it to hold my body upright, with plenty of lumbar support, so I could ignore my skeleton. It had to cushion my tush in high-density foam, so that I couldn’t feel my sitting bones. But my body never wanted that. All along, it wanted freedom and movement, and I refused to listen.

Why Sitting is Not the New Smoking, and 3 Ways to Do It Right

In 2014, endocrinologist Dr. James Levine published his anti-sitting manifesto, “Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It.” He coined the term “sitting disease” and explained that no amount of exercise could counteract the effects of sitting for eight hours a day.

Studies backed him up, showing intensive sitting slowed the metabolism, reduced healthy cholesterol by 20 percent, increased the risk of cardiovascular problems, and doubled the chance of developing type-2 diabetes. Levine recommended a treadmill desk, to walk at a slow pace of one to two mph, for most of the day.

Your Office Is Causing Your Back Pain. Here Are 5 Ways To Fix It.

In the course of researching and writing my book, Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, I met scores of people who told me that they liked⁠—or even loved⁠—their jobs and their colleagues. Still, they dreaded going to work, because it was hard to think about anything except how much their backs hurt.

More than once they’d ordered expensive new equipment, hoping to find a way to get out of pain. They’d raised their desktops to standing height, only to realize that being stuck on their feet all day made for cranky knees, hips and ankles. Many jumped on “the medical merry-go-round,” seeing chiropractors, physical therapists, pain management doctors and surgeons, desperate to find someone who could fix them.

What Ergonomics Overlooked — You

There’s a very good chance you’re reading this while sitting in what you hoped would be The Perfect Ergonomic Chair. The molded-foam seat is lovingly cupping your buttocks while holding your thighs just so. The lumbar support is brawny, the armrests adjustable. And you’re holding yourself to the prescribed 90-degrees—arms, hips, knees, all at that sharp right angle. 

These days, everything from shower fixtures to vegetable peelers and baby carriers are being sold as “ergonomic.” But despite all the hype, the E-word might not mean what you think it does.

The truth is, we’ve been duped into believing that “ergonomic” and “good for you” are the same. But if you look up “ergonomics” in the dictionary, you’ll find this: “The study of people’s efficiency in the work environment.”

Notice that there’s nothing in there about your personal health, happiness, or well-being?

Project: Project Forever

Strategist, Content Development, Dec 2019 - Aug 2020

Facilitated board member relationships, guided corporate message development, synthesized complexconcepts, expanded marketing outreach, worked with cross-disciplinary creative teams to assure consistency in message and strategy across several corporate divisions.

Back in Business: A New Series

BY CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN | MARCH 25, 2020

So, you read Crooked and started a regular exercise rehab-focused exercise program. You made the Big Commitment, survived the initial discomfort of reconditioning your body, and took a serious look at your sleeping and eating habits and your mental health.

And as a result, you’ve been feeling much better.

Until now, that is. With COVID-19 keeping everyone inside, you’ve turned into a sloth. With the gym and exercise studios closed, and the sofa and a plate of warm brownies calling to you, you’ve fallen off the wagon.

It’s time to climb back up, before your back starts to retaliate. (Or maybe it’s already letting you know what it thinks of your new habits.)

t’s the Little Things that Count

BY CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN | APRIL 14, 2020

Some days, stuck at home, it seems like it’s impossible to get anything done. I start out with the best of intentions, and then…it’s 9 p.m. and I’m in front of the TV, watching True Detective, (which is really very good), while making an ever-deeper impression upon the family room sofa.

So how to avoid this sense that I’ve accomplished nada?

Small goals. Incremental ones, that add up to concrete and measurable improvement. You’ll note that “incremental, concrete and measurable” are not terms that are relevant to grocery foraging, cleaning up the kitchen or doing the laundry.

In This War, Exercise to Stay Battle Ready

BY CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN | APRIL 3, 2020

Why do I exercise? Until two weeks ago, I’d have told you that I work out to keep my back in shape, my brain functioning, and to avoid developing a resemblance to an overstuffed couch.

After the events of the last few weeks, in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis, I have a different answer. Read this, and you might, too.

Right now, I’m exercising to give my immune system the boost it needs to work properly while it’s under attack. Because frankly? This is war.

Please contact me at cjramin@mac.com or 415.710.2479