In 2005, Karen Swim leveraged 20 years of experience in corporate, sales, marketing and a life-long passion for communications to establish Words For Hire. With an eye on the future, the company was founded as a “virtual agency” with a network of consultants experienced in strategic communications, public relations, marketing, content marketing and social media. This model allows us to offer an expanded menu of services and customize an account team tailored to your specific needs.
Our virtual agency delivers real-world benefits:
- Skilled professionals working in their areas of expertise.
- A team that can ramp up quickly and hit the ground running.
- You are not sold on senior level talent but serviced by interns and junior staffers.
- People who are doing what we love; many of our consultants also run their own practices
Karen Swim, President and CEO
Karen has more than two decades of experience in public relations and marketing communications, sales management, and strategic marketing. She uses integrative problem-solving to customize marketing and content solutions for clients. An award-winning sales and marketing professional with a depth of business expertise, clients value Karen’s broad-ranging knowledge, and commitment to helping them reach their goals.
Prior to opening her own agency, Karen worked for more than two decades in leadership roles that included leading top performing sales teams at Glaxo SmithKline and developing and executing marketing initiatives for seven states at Quest Diagnostics. As an independent practitioner, she uses her deep business, marketing, and communications experience to customize public relations, marketing, and content solutions for B2B, healthcare, technology and nonprofit clients.
She is an energetic, innovative leader with a commitment to excellence who wins high satisfaction from clients for her business acumen, results-driven approach and principled leadership. Karen combines creativity and strategic thinking to develop communications initiatives that support bottom-line business goals. Her areas of expertise include strategic planning, business management, leadership, social media, content marketing, branding and marketing. Karen is a Southern California native now residing in Michigan.
Media Information, Mentions & Appearances
Strategic Partners
Daria Steigman, a Words For Hire strategic partner, is a senior marketing communications and digital strategist who helps organizations communicate effectively with employees, members, customers, the business community, policymakers, and other key stakeholders. She is a leader and team-builder with a 20+-year record of crafting data-driven strategies to support core business goals. Daria’s diverse clients have included Fortune 500 companies, universities, associations, government agencies, and international organizations.
She is a frequent speaker on topics related to both business strategy and marketing communications and digital media. She is also the author of a blog that focuses on the business of running a business, entrepreneurship, marketing communications, social business, social media, strategic thinking, and what she calls Independent Thinking. She’s been a contributor to Workshifting.com and to Overdrive, the blog of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. She also created and wrote a monthly business column for IABC’s CW Bulletin.
She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, and masters’ degrees in industrial and labor relations (MILR) from Cornell University and liberal studies (MALS) from Georgetown University. She wrote a book of poems as part of her MALS thesis.
In her spare time, she loves to hike and run half-marathons. And she’s a huge baseball fan.