My name is Andrea Kwamya-Ward, and I’ve spent a lot of my life doing things that don't obviously belong together.

I'm a musician, storyteller, researcher, and strategist. I studied rhetoric and speech communication at Ithaca College, then earned my master's in strategic communications from Columbia University. My career has spanned consumer research, brand strategy, and creative communications — work that's taken me inside some of the world's biggest consumer brands.

Music was always running alongside that work, and it never grew out of it or into it. I minored in music and sight-singing at Ithaca, and I've spent much of my life performing — in orchestras, pit orchestras, ensembles, choirs, and collaborative projects of every kind. Consumer research and orchestral performance are about as different as two industries can be, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But underneath both, I keep doing the same thing: I listen closely, notice patterns, and figure out how to make what I notice land for someone else. In a research session, that's hearing what someone isn't quite saying and turning it into something a brand can act on. With music, it's listening for where the harmony wants to go and finding my place in it. Different rooms, different stakes — same instinct.

That became impossible to miss once I became a mother. I sang in a choir throughout my pregnancy, and my son learned to kick along with the harmonies before he was even born. Now, at one, he already lights up at music — singing is still one of the easiest ways I have to reach him, teach him, make him laugh, or just be near him. His response reminded me that my instinct is to provide and capture understanding.

Strategy is one place I put that attention. Music and storytelling are the others.

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