Founder and Chief Consultant, Red Box Communications
Boston, Massachusetts
Carissa is an executive-level consultant with 20 years of experience in marketing communications and brand storytelling for healthcare and other regulated industries. She has spent most of her career helping brands and non-profits better tell their story, finding the right channels to reach their key audiences, and forging connections that create communities of brand advocates. Having worked in print and online media, as well as both television and radio—all in Boston—Carissa learned the ins and outs of content creation and consumption in a market that demands the best.
After leading global marketing communications for two multinational healthcare companies, Carissa started her own consulting business, specializing in content marketing and communications. In 2011, Carissa took on the role of the first Social Media Community and Content Director at Aetna, a 160-year-old Fortune 100 consumer health brand. There she was responsible for driving collaboration across business functions to develop the brand’s social media strategies and best practices, while serving as an advocate and counsel for the enterprise-wide adoption of social media. She has since consulted various healthcare organizations, including some of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical, medical device and hospital system brands.
Carissa is especially proud of her ongoing role as both a patient and provider advocate. A cause that's near and dear to her heart, she has been dedicated for many years to education programs for sudden cardiac arrest awareness through her efforts with the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation, now serving on its Advisory Council. Carissa is based in Boston, where she's a lifelong New England sports fan and the proud mother of an amazing 18-year-old daughter. You can often find them both cheering for their beloved Red Sox at Fenway Park.