Katie McCleary · A speaker's own stage, apart from the shared brand

Katie McCleary is a keynote speaker, author, and graduate leadership professor, and co-author of Bridge the Gap. Her speaking presence lived inside the shared Bridge The Gap site, a joint brand built to serve two founders. An event planner searching for Katie met the pair first and the person second.

She was ready to stand on her own stage. That meant a different message, built around whimsy, wonder, and what is next, and a different set of readers: conference organizers, learning and development teams, and journalists looking for a voice on thinking and leadership. It also meant two ways to book her, directly or through her speaker agency. Reusing the Bridge The Gap copy would have put the new site in search competition with the old one, so the words needed to change as much as the look.

We began with clarity. Who is this site for, and what should they do next? The answer was event planners, learning and development teams, and media producers, and the action was to inquire. A working session landed the positioning line Katie carried through the project: she brings to the stage whimsy, wonder, and what is next. Copy was rewritten with a whimsical tone and the neuroscience where it earns its place, not ported from the shared site.

For design we kept the structure that made booking obvious on Bridge The Gap, then gave Katie her own look: a deep plum ground, cream sections, coral and pink accents, and her K mark at scale. The hero pairs that K with Katie on stage and a round keynote reel button. A proof band of metrics and media logos follows, then the offerings, the book, and a media page with a category filter and a media kit download. Every path ends at the same quiet invitation to inquire.

We built on WordPress and Elementor, staged it, and reviewed it with Katie through MarkUp, checking mobile first. The project paused while Katie refreshed her photography and tightened her language, then resumed in July. At launch the site shipped with on-page SEO, website policies, an inquiry form routed to her inbox, and a LinkedIn banner and launch graphics to match.

The site went live ahead of Katie sharing it with her wider circle. Her review notes were handled on the live site within days, and she now makes small language edits herself in WordPress. A care plan now keeps the site updated and monitored.

Katie now has a home that is hers: her own identity, her own words, and a booking path that works whether an organizer reaches her directly or through her agency. Bridge the Gap keeps its own site, and the two no longer have to share one front door. Inquiry and traffic measurement are the next chapter, and we will report numbers once they are verified.