writer, designer, educator
studio-mz, founded in 1999, embodies Mary Zimnik's creative communications work. She has worked for more than two decades as an educator, writer, editor, designer and photographer for digital and print projects in public relations, brand development, marketing, education and technology. She was also a location agent on-set for major feature film, documentary and commercial projects, where she twice negotiated the most lucrative ever per-day location filming fee, breaking her own record within a year. From 2017 to early 2021, Mary lived full-time as a digital nomad, working while traveling in order to shoot photography on-location.
At Emory University Continuing Education for nearly 17 years and Southern Methodist University CAPE for six years, Mary co-founded Emory's first Digital Marketing certificate and founded the Advanced Graphic Design and Web Design certificates (26 courses, in total.) At present, Mary's new role at Emory is as instructor / evaluator for all students in the new asynchronous Digital Marketing certificate, which partners with educators from Facebook and Google.
Prior to founding studio-mz, Mary managed creative services at Agnes Scott College and was a location agent representing universities for filming projects, including feature films such as Scream 2 and Stroke of Genius, as well as documentary, television and corporate work. In addition to creating and managing hundreds of print and digital projects, she’s judged national design contests and film festivals, won national contests, taught design and marketing at world-class universities and in national conferences and taught English as a Second Language to students from all over the world.
While a student at Eckerd College, she juggled her American history, politics and literature studies while working both at an oceanside ice cream shop and a hospital. She’s shot photos on assignment 1,200 feet high atop the collapsed Skyway Bridge, from inside the burning Princess Martha Hotel and on the 50-yard line at a Tampa Bay Bucs game (all while a student at the Poynter Institute). She participated in a sweat lodge with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and studied Jewish mysticism and Eastern Christian theology in seminary. She’s met literary giants John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Jane Smiley and was invited to Saul Zaentz’s anniversary screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — and all that grist for the page.
Mary has written advertising, marketing and social media content for clients. For three agencies in the US and Europe, she’s ghostwritten white papers, features, editorials and blog posts on topics including artificial intelligence, Big Data analytics, DevOps, cloud migration, marketing strategy for millennials, UX design, the IoT, politics, history, art, education, health care and even food, nutrition, sports and entertainment. And although now she is embarking on new frontiers in writing for her, fondest of all was in 1995 when she won her first writing contest, a promotion for the film French Kiss about love in the digital age.