We Specialize in Growth
From high-growth unicorns eyeing IPO to Fortune 500 staples, we know what it takes to scale and to navigate the challenges that come with growth in the 21st century. Kickstand brings decades of experience and proven success to the high-stakes tech sector — and a reputation for being one of the top tech PR firms in the world.
Our Approach
At Kickstand, we bring an MIT mentality to PR. Core to our philosophy and approach is an intense focus on data and intelligence. That means being early adopters and innovators in how PR is measured. But more importantly, it means using data at every touchpoint — from strategy development and campaign ideation, to testing the performance of individual media pitches. We believe that when you ground everything in real information, you can make smarter decisions, drive continuous learnings and improvements, and ultimately build a more defensible brand and business.
Beyond driving stronger results, our analytical approach to PR deeply influences our culture — one built around taking action.
We take immense pride in being a team of highly motivated, self-driven, and creative individuals. Every team member at Kickstand is asked to explore, test, and yes, sometimes even fail – all in the name of experience, learning and growth. That innate curiosity, coupled with our love for all things data, is also what empowers our team to consistently bring new insights and ideas to the table before our clients even think to ask for them.
Our Leadership Team
Molly George
Co-founder and Partner
Kristina Kennedy
Co-founder and Partner
Kristina is motivated by building an amazing workplace that does amazing work. She and her co-founder, Molly George, are recognized for their leadership in building an employee-first culture continuously acknowledged for generous benefits, work culture, and innovative programming for working parents. As COO at Kickstand, Kristina’s passion is client success. She works daily with both B2B and B2C clients, solving for critical communications strategy and crisis needs, offering specialities in category creation and competitive strategy. Under her tenure, Kickstand has achieved exponential growth, including doubling total revenue and headcount in 2021, driven in part by 95%+ client retention levels. Under her tenure, Kickstand has achieved exponential growth, including doubling total revenue and headcount in 2021, driven in part by 95%+ client retention levels. Prior to Kickstand, Kristina held management and executive-level marketing roles in some of the fastest growing tech start ups of the past decade, including Philo, Abine, Bigcommerce, Gazelle.com and Zipcar. Kristina is active in the Austin community. Currently she is a mentor for Techstars Austin and serves on the advisory board of Foster Village, a local non-profit supporting foster families in the metro Austin area. Outside of work, Kristina loves being…well, outside, whether she’s hiking the Colorado mountains or achieving her goal of visiting every National Park in the US with her husband and three boys. Kristina holds a BA from Notre Dame and an MBA from MIT-Sloan School of Business.
Read MoreElisabeth Drummond-Deutsch
Director of Finance
As head of finance, Elisabeth has been a core part of Kickstand’s success since its inception in 2013. With Elisabeth’s support, Kickstand has grown not only quickly – but intelligently. It’s no surprise that she’s a numbers person, with a few of her favorites being 13.1, 26.2, and 140.6. Yes, outside of work Elisabeth actively chooses to participate in daunting feats including half and full marathons and Ironman Triathlons, often competing alongside or in honor of several of her siblings. And if that fun fact didn’t already make you tired, this one will: Elisabeth is a self-proclaimed morning person, regularly rising at 4am and achieving more by sunrise than most people do in an entire day.
Read MoreSarah Frankoff
Account Director
As Kickstand’s resident agency-lifer, Sarah’s career has centered around executing large-scale communications plans on behalf of nationally recognized brands and high-profile spokespeople. Sarah started her career in healthcare, working with some of the largest pediatric hospitals in the country as they launched robust national media programs. Over the years, she has touched many industries – in both B2B and B2C – everything from hospitality and CPG to insurtech and autonomous vehicles, and loves working with companies during high growth stages all the way through to exit. At the crux of her experience and passion for this work is elevating her clients to tier 1 national coverage – such as CNN, CNBC, Cheddar, Today Show, New York Times and so on, although her career highlight may be working with Anthony Bourdain during his final season of Parts Unknown as they featured her client in an episode. As a born and raised Texan, Sarah’s love for country dancing, honky tonks and her dog, Bo, is as big as the state. She also has a side hustle of being the (unofficial) number one fan of the Austin Fire Department (well, one firefighter in particular).
Sacha Woodcock
People Operations Manager
Nycole Walsh
Research & Content Manager
Nycole leads Kickstand’s research + content team, known for its exceptional speed and service. Working across nearly all of Kickstand’s B2B and B2C clients, Nycole’s team specializes in capturing compelling and newsworthy owned data and turning it into high-performance content for use across PR, marketing, sales, and more. Under her tenure, research has become a frequent investment for Kickstand clients and additional brands looking to supplement their content strategy, resulting in her team driving a 500% increase in YoY revenue in 2021. Outside of work, you can find Nycole baking the most amazing cakes, breaking out of escape rooms (100% escape rate, NBD), or at Disney World — a place she believes you need to visit more than once per year. She lives in beautiful Austin, TX with her husband, kiddos, and pet python Figment. Nycole and her team hold research and data analytics certifications from Harvard Business School Online.
Read MoreJoanna Weinstein
Senior Account Manager
Jo worked behind the camera for almost 10 years, which is one of the reasons she is such a great storyteller. For any 30 Rock fans, she began her career in NYC as an NBC Page (Kenneth in real life) giving tours of NBC studios and holding stints at the Today Show, SNL, NBC local news and Syfy’s marketing department. She then spent over 6 years as CNBC producer where she covered special programming for both dayside and primetime, from breaking news, to IPOs, to secret lives of the super rich. Jo knows how reporters think and utilizes her insider knowledge and expertise to help build strategies and programs that drive compelling coverage and even better, real business impact. When she made the move to Boston to venture into public relations, she worked with companies of all sizes and stages in both consumer and B2B – from launch through IPO (which, coincidentally, are Jo’s favorite letters). After being a New England transplant for 5 years, Jo now resides back in her home state of New York, exploring a new neighborhood in the Hudson Valley. During her free time, she loves to travel, dine at new restaurants, walk her beagle, Sophie, and binge Bravo. One day, Jo hopes that she’ll be on the Real Housewives of upstate New York.
Read MoreHannah Eure
Senior Account Manager
When it comes to enterprise technology PR, Hannah definitely knows her stuff, and she has the track record to prove it. For the past eight years, Hannah has run successful global programs for clients ranging from cloud giants like Salesforce to high-growth brands across areas including marketing technology, DevOps, and information security. When Hannah isn’t kicking ass on her accounts, you’ll find her relaxing on the porch with her beloved dog, Piper.
Molly Bernard
Director, Digital Strategy & Analytics
Suzie Linville
Senior Account Manager
Suzie comes from a journalism background and brings over 12 years of agency and corporate communications experience to Kickstand. She is an expert in creating messaging around complex technologies that can be understood by a less technical audience. Suzie’s managed startup SMBs to Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries including security, mobile, gaming, data & analytics, supply chain, Broadcast technology, consumer, B2B, SaaS and CPaaS.
Nicole Barbosa
Account Manager
Kaelen Delaune
Account Manager
Don’t ask Kaelen to pick between project management, strategic communications, and analyst relations because she loves them all. Kaelen has spent much of her career supporting enterprise company narratives beyond news and product announcements, and specializes in crafting compelling stories for some of the leading information security, fintech, and business communications and analytics brands. Kaelen will never turn down a worryingly large cup of black coffee — and just FYI, if an episode of Forensic Files is on, your call or text message will be ignored.