Hi, I'm Ariel! After decades as an independent publisher, I joined Medium in 2023 as Director of Publisher Growth, acting as an advocate between Medium's product team and my fellow indie publishers.

While I'm here in a professional capacity to work with folks running publications on Medium, I'm also a whole-ass person who doesn't believe in compartmentlization... so keep reading if you want the backstory.

I started blogging in 2000, and have worked full time as a publisher since 2007 -- but I'm also the author of several books, including From Shitshow To Afterglow, PROS BEFORE BROS, and three editions of Offbeat Bride.

My writing likes to poke at the soft places of overlap between culture, identity, relationships, and personal development.

I got my start in the mid-’90s editing a rave magazine, graduated the Columbia Publishing Course at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2001, and then spent most of the ’00s doing marketing for corporations like Microsoft, Amazon, and The Seattle Times.

In 2009, I went fulltime with my bootstrapped digital media company, Offbeat Empire LLC. In the years since, my publications have reached about 60 million people via web and social media properties like offbeatwed.com, formerly known as Offbeat Bride.

...So yeah, that's the career stuff. (If you want more, that's what Linkedin is for!)

However, like you, I contain multitudes...

I'm a 48-year-old middle-aged, middle-class white woman. I live in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood with my 13-year-old son.

I'm an independent researcher obsessed with business fields like digital publishing and the passion economy, psychological topics like shadow work and secular mindfulness, and spiritual stuff like non-duality and panpsychism.

I'm a dancer with a daily devotional practice, a regular meditator, weekly weightlifter, and a new trail runner. I'm bisexual and currently flying solo. I'm an Enneagram 4w3 or 3w4... either way, I'm a hard-working high-functioning eccentric. I'm simultaneously my own trophy wife and femme daddy. I'm a spiritual adolescent and a chameleon and a projection screen for your own internalized battles with aspects of yourself.

This is all to say, I'm just one more finger of the same divine hand as you. (Hello, my fellow fingers! 👋)