About Justin
I’m Justin Pickering. I’m a writer, designer, business builder, and project leader based outside Boston.
My career has taken a fairly unusual path. I spent fourteen years teaching before building and running my own language-services company. Along the way, I’ve worked on startups, international business projects, fundraising, communications, product concepts, policy work, and creative properties.
I’ve worked extensively across cultures and languages and speak English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.
The projects have looked very different from one another, but my role has often been surprisingly similar: take something complicated or not yet fully formed, figure out what it needs to become, bring the right pieces together, communicate it clearly, and help carry it into the real world.
That has meant building a business from scratch, helping ventures raise capital, developing projects across international markets, navigating institutional and regulatory environments, writing everything from investor materials to scripts, and creating original games, stories, characters, and other intellectual property.
These days, I work independently from my studio in Massachusetts. Most of my time goes toward developing my own creative work and portfolio of original ideas. I also take on a small number of outside projects where my combination of creative, commercial, and leadership experience is particularly useful.
I’m especially interested in ambitious projects that are difficult to categorize or integrate: the ones where the destination may be reasonably clear, but the path to making the thing actually work is not.
I don’t specialize in one medium because the work has never really happened that way. Sometimes the answer is a business. Sometimes it’s a product, a piece of writing, a system, a game, a story, or a team organized around a problem.
What interests me is making the thing coherent, useful, and real.
Original ideas, thoughtfully designed and built to work in the real world.
Period: 2022
My role: Brand narrative development / copywriting
What it was: A brand narrative commissioned by Enrique Kalb and Ross Brouse, co-founder and President of Continuous Cyber Security, for the company's Sales Director.
What I did:
Wrote brand copy for the Sales Director's website, positioning him as a public-facing representative of the company's work and expertise.
What happened:
The site established the Sales Director's public brand identity, made his role and expertise more legible to prospective clients and general audiences, and reduced the need for the company's sales and brand teams to repeatedly explain that positioning themselves.
Letter to Australian Ministers
Period: 2018
My role: International business development / government communications
What it was:
A formal outreach letter to Australian government officials introducing Flexi Africa and its international e-commerce initiative focused on economic development and small-business growth.
What I did:
Developed and wrote the government-facing communication, translating Flexi Africa’s commercial model and development goals into a clear case for engagement with Australian public-sector stakeholders.
What happened:
The letter became part of Flexi Africa’s international outreach effort, providing the company with a formal vehicle for presenting the project to government officials and opening conversations around potential participation and support.
Period: 2018
My role: International business development / partnership communications
What it was:
A formal B2B communication to Denford Mutashu, President of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, concerning a strategic partnership between the organization and Flexi Africa.
What I did:
Met with Mutashu as part of Flexi Africa’s business-development work and developed the written communication explaining the relationship between the organizations and its commercial purpose.
What happened:
The partnership work led to an ongoing professional relationship with Mutashu. Following our work together, he provided me with a personal letter of recommendation endorsing my work.
Press Release - FlexiAfrica - Draft 2
Period: 2018
My role: Marketing Director – North America / corporate communications
What it was:
A draft press release developed for Flexi Africa, an African e-commerce venture preparing to expand its international presence.
What I did:
Developed and wrote a proposed U.S.-facing announcement introducing Flexi Africa’s business model, leadership, international relationships, and plans for expansion. At the time, I served as Flexi Africa’s Marketing Director for North America.
What happened:
The release was completed as a draft but was not ultimately published or distributed. It remains an example of the communications and market-development work I produced for Flexi Africa during this period.