Marika Olsen

Director of Communications, Marketing at Columbia University Global Centers

In her 25+ year communication and media career, Marika Olsen has managed global, cross-functional teams that varied in size, scope and geography, including a 4-person CNN documentary team, a staff of 55 for a Central Asian media project, and working collaboratively as an election outreach advisor to the Iraq government. She is an award-winning long form TV producer who has covered some of the biggest issues of our time and whose work has given her the opportunity to live in Atlanta, Tashkent, Miami, Baghdad, Ramallah, Silicon Valley and now Manhattan. (From CNN to Google to Columbia.) In each, her core passion has been creating memorable collateral with an emphasis on authentic storytelling. In her avatar life, she’s a staff writer for a satire show, so any opportunity to write humor IRL or InRealJob thrills her, both for internal as well as external communication.