Due North: Founder

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Karen North

Travel & Culture Hound

Ms. North has been interested in languages and other cultures for most of her life, beginning with French classes in grade school and childhood vacations to American Indian reservations. Karen studied Spanish in high school and lived her senior year as an exchange student in Barcelona, Spain. Upon her return, she earned BA (magna cum laude) and MA degrees in Spanish Literature from the University of Georgia, as well as an MBA from Cornell University. Karen literally grew up flying, traveling with her family in small private planes... even learning how to fly. Ms. North has had travel in her blood ever since.

Karen’s passion for learning how people elsewhere say and do things led her to take on German (1 year) and Russian (3 years), then Navajo, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin). She was a summer intern at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. Ms. North later won a Rotary Foundation International Scholar to Germany for 15 months, where she studied at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität in Frankfurt.

Karen has spent most of her career in multilingual, multi-cultural environments. Ms. North held numerous brand strategy and naming positions at several West Coast agencies. Her client-side experience includes marketing responsibilities for a French biometric vendor and marcom positions at Whirlpool Corporation. As Director of a Barcelona-based trade development and commercial promotion organization for many years, Karen spearheaded myriad Spanish manufacturers’ entry into the US marketplace.

In 2002, Ms. North founded Devign®, a branding consultancy that assists companies to competitively differentiate themselves through unique verbal design, messaging and voice/tone. Here again, language — English and Spanish — is the primary medium to help her clients drive brand preference.

Language Instruction

Ms. North instructed Spanish at Morehouse College (Atlanta, Georgia; 2008 to 2011). She has also taught Spanish part-time at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia; 2005 to 2007 & 2009), Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, Georgia), Ithaca College (Ithaca, New York) and the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia). Additionally, she has extensive private tutoring and interpreting experience.