Katharine Laidlaw, a strategic communications leader with extensive experience in the arts and higher education, will join Pomona College as chief communications officer starting May 12.
A creative strategist and Emmy-winning producer, Laidlaw has led transformative initiatives to expand the reach, influence and impact of creative education and enterprise.
Most recently, she served as chief marketing & communications officer for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, where she drove efforts to produce one of the highest-grossing seasons in the organization’s history and served as a key architect of its current strategic plan. Her work unified the festival’s visual identity, elevated brand messaging and expanded visibility through strategic partnerships and a comprehensive communications overhaul.
“I am honored to join Pomona College, an institution with a rich tradition of academic excellence and creative inquiry,” says Laidlaw. “I look forward to partnering with colleagues across campus to amplify Pomona’s remarkable stories and advance the College’s mission. Together, we will demonstrate the power of the liberal arts to develop critical thinking, unlock creative capacity and inspire meaningful change.”
Reporting to Acting President Robert Gaines this spring, and President G. Gabrielle Starr starting this summer, Laidlaw will be a key member of the College’s executive staff leadership team, contributing to strategic and collaborative decision making. Among her priorities will be aligning the College’s institutional voice and messaging, communications strategic planning, internal communications as well as crisis and issues management. She will be the lead for the College’s award-winning Office of Communications team.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Katharine to our Pomona community,” says Gaines. “She has the experience, creativity and vision to champion Pomona’s institutional voice, one of higher education’s most compelling, and help shape its future.”
Prior to Spoleto, Laidlaw served as the vice president for strategic communications and engagement at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, one of the nation’s leading arts education and performing institutions dedicated to the development of young artists. At Interlochen, she led the development of a new brand strategy, award-winning institutional website and digital advertising campaign that sparked a dramatic rise in inquiries and applications, significantly boosted enrollment and expanded student diversity. She also served on the executive team that helped steward the institution through the pandemic and launch its virtual education platform Interlochen Online in response.
Highly experienced in higher education, she was the inaugural chief marketing officer at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), where she spearheaded a multi-award-winning rebranding and recruitment strategy that drove significant gains in applications, as well as UNCSA’s precipitous rise in industry rankings and media coverage. She also led creative development for UNCSA’s most successful comprehensive campaign, Powering Creativity, and the re-envisioned alumni magazine Scene.
Laidlaw earned her B.A. in English from Davidson College and an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill.