Creative Producer · Art Direction · Experience Design San Diego, CA

Visceral first.I build environments across story, space, and food to evoke emotions you can feel before you can name.

Working across concept, visual direction, and production to turn abstract ideas into tangible worlds built to be entered, experienced, and remembered.

Explore
work

Approx. 15Events and programs annually

$250K+Annual operations and experience budget

Up to 80Guests per program

Selected work / 2024 to 2026

Ideas made tangible.

Experience design, cultural programming, and sensory storytelling. Shaped with a producer’s eye and built with an operator’s discipline.

Guests tasting and gathering around a styled workplace experience

How I work

Creative thinking,
built to happen.

01 / Explore
Find the human truth.
Observe the audience, place, culture, and emotional context behind an experience.
02 / Shape
Give the idea a world.
Turn observations into concept, narrative, visual language, and guest journey.
03 / Produce
Make every detail real.
Bring it into the world through collaborators, budgets, vendors, logistics, and onsite execution.

01 / Ongoing platform

Culture
by Design

Designing participation, connection, and belonging into the rhythms of the workplace.

Client: Schrödinger
Location: San Diego, CA
Years: 2023 to Present

01 / Opportunity

From programming to building culture.

Schrödinger’s San Diego workplace needed programming that could create connection beyond the everyday rhythms of the office. I saw an opportunity to treat workplace culture as an experience, using food, making, storytelling, and shared rituals to bring people together.

02 / Approach

Design around participation.

I developed Winter Traditions Around the World, a four-week series exploring seasonal traditions across cultures and culminating in an immersive winter market. Alongside original workshops and Kids Day activities, I help employees and ERGs turn their ideas into executable programs.

03 / Production

Hold the vision and the details.

I produce approximately 15 events and programs annually, coordinating stakeholders, timelines, vendors, communications, materials, logistics, and live execution for groups of up to 80. I also manage a $250K+ annual operations and experience budget.

Winter Traditions series email outlining four weeks of cultural programming culminating in an immersive winter market — [SETUP] Program architecture / Four weeks exploring seasonal traditions across cultures, culminating in an immersive winter market.

Conference room before the winter market installation — [SET LAB] Spatial transformation / An everyday conference room became the final chapter of the winter series.

Fabric and materials being installed across the conference room tables — [SET LAB] Spatial transformation / An everyday conference room became the final chapter of the winter series.

[PARTICIPATION] Pasta making / A shared task made collaboration physical and playful.

[LEARNING] Kids Day / A balloon powered car turned basic engineering into play.

Colleagues arranging flowers together — [MAKING] Floral workshop / A quieter creative format for learning through material and composition.

What this demonstrates

I can identify an emotional need, build a creative format around it, and create the systems that make the experience repeatable, not just beautiful once.

02 / Immersive experience

Into the
Kelp Forest

A living network beneath the surface, experienced through art, science, and a shared table.

Partner: Our Collective Foods × Olivewood Gardens
Date: August 8, 2026
Location: Olivewood Gardens

Oriana Poindexter / Cyanotype canopyMovement became part of the environment

01 / Opportunity

From ingredient to ecosystem.

Into the Kelp Forest reframed kelp as more than an ingredient. The experience invited guests to encounter it as a living system connecting ocean, art, science, and food.

02 / Direction

Move from observation to connection.

Field and lab research informed a visual language of specimens, translucency, movement, and scale. That language shaped a guest journey from discovery in the garden to a shared table.

03 / Production

Build the network in real space.

I supported development through onsite delivery, coordinating collaborators, installation details, educational touchpoints, guest flow, and the culminating three course family style dinner.

Creative direction / Working deck

The concept began
as a living network.

The direction deck moved the idea beyond kelp as an ingredient and defined the experience as a connected ecosystem of forest, relationships, and collective participation.

Creative direction deck page describing the shift from ingredient to ecosystem — [DIRECTION] Selected working pages / Defining the shift from ingredient to ecosystem and the experience pillars that followed.

Creative direction deck page defining the forest, connections, and collective experience pillars — [DIRECTION] Selected working pages / Defining the shift from ingredient to ecosystem and the experience pillars that followed.

A full bull kelp specimen stretched across a lab sink, showing its scale and pneumatocyst — [RESEARCH] Lab and archive study / Scale, anatomy, and specimen form shaped the visual language.

Broad bull kelp blades examined by hand during a lab visit — [RESEARCH] Lab and archive study / Scale, anatomy, and specimen form shaped the visual language.

The experience journey

Research became
a sequence.

01Enter the forestGarden + ocean / Discovery begins
02Trace the connectionsArt + science / Relationships become visible
03Join the collectiveShared table / Participation completes the ecosystem

Behind the scenes / Installation

A canopy built
to move.

Oriana Poindexter installed cyanotype panels across the garden. Wind animated the silk, turning a visual treatment into a shifting spatial environment.

[SETUP]Oriana Poindexter / Cyanotype installation

The wider frame preserves the making: ladder, unfinished tables, and the artist adjusting the work before guests arrived.

Ingredient / Course

The ecosystem returned
to the plate.

Ingredient and course diptychs made the culinary translation visible without separating the meal from its source.

A diptych pairing golden kelp with seaweed cured ahi — [PAIRING 01] Kelp / Seaweed cured ahi

A diptych pairing vivid sea lettuce with a green garden course — [PAIRING 02] Sea lettuce / Ingredient translated into the course

Guests gathered beneath the cyanotype canopy for the family style dinner — [SHARED TABLE]**Join the collective**
The journey resolved at a communal meal where ingredient, ecosystem, and conversation met.

What this demonstrates

I know how to help a layered creative concept stay coherent across collaborators, mediums, guest touchpoints, and live execution.

03 / Concept extension

Cross
Pollination

An extension to Our Collective Foods’ In Bloom, using pollination as a metaphor for how ingredients, people, ideas, and disciplines make one another possible.

Partner: Our Collective Foods
Year: 2026

A garden table composed with flowers, edible textures, petals, and unexpected dishes for In Bloom — In Bloom / Garden to table environmentPhotography + visual direction

01 / Context

Extend the theme into a connective idea.

Our Collective Foods developed In Bloom, a multisensory food experience exploring pollination through ingredients, ecosystems, and exchange.

02 / Concept

Give the exchange a metaphor.

The original event was In Bloom, developed by Our Collective Foods around pollination. As the experience brought together multiple vendors, makers, disciplines, and visiting contributors, I introduced Cross Pollination as the connective metaphor, a shared language for how those parts could influence one another.

03 / Translation

Reveal the experience in fragments.

I carried the idea through moodboarding, visual and spatial direction, vendor coordination, photography, and social content. The experience unfolded gradually, inviting guests to move, interact, and discover connections rather than having everything explained at once.

Creative direction board organized around atmosphere, food, texture, people, ritual, and movement — [SET LAB] Creative direction / Reference imagery shaped the atmosphere, food language, texture, ritual, and movement.

The working premise

A metaphor gives the work a shared language.

Cross Pollination gave the experience a way to travel: between makers and guests, across the garden, and from visual curiosity into active participation.

Discovery
Movement
Exchange
Collaboration

Behind the scenes / In Bloom

The world took shape by hand.

Flowers were sorted, placed, and adjusted onsite as collaborators translated the visual treatment into a living garden table.

[SETUP]Building the table

The wide frame reveals the full spatial system: multiple stations, repeated floral gestures, and the hands coordinating them.

A collaborator shaping a loose floral arrangement onsite — [SET LAB]**Composing asymmetry**
Loose stems, varied height, and visible movement kept the environment organic rather than overly styled.

Cut flowers staged across a linen-covered table before placement — [MATERIALS]**Before placement**
The palette was staged in fragments before individual stems entered the wider composition.

Fragments→Curiosity→Engagement→Desire

In Bloom / Movement + discoveryThe farm tour

Guests moved through the growing environment before returning to the table, making the ecosystem part of the experience, not just its backdrop.

In Bloom / The whole roomThe room in motion

A moving record of the people, gestures, dishes, and exchanges that made the experience feel alive.

The experience in practice

Food did not always announce itself as food. Familiar forms were rearranged to slow people down, reward a closer look, and turn tasting into discovery.

01 / Visual misdirectionThe bird’s nest

An edible form that reads first as sculpture, then as an invitation to look again.

02 / An edible environmentMoss cake

A moss inspired texture is arranged as a landscape: botanical in appearance, edible in reality.

A maker offers guests miniature desserts styled as planted pots — 03 / The revealA garden you can eat
Miniature plant pots continued the visual trick: something botanical in appearance, dessert in reality.

04 / RitualHoney in motion

A small tactile gesture made pollination visible without extra explanation.

05 / CollaborationMany hands, one world

The concept held across vendors, dishes, styling, and service, one careful gesture at a time.

Guests gathering around and engaging with the styled garden table — 06 / ExchangeThe table comes alive
The final composition was not complete until people entered it.

What this demonstrates

I can enter an existing idea, find the conceptual thread that makes it richer, and translate that thread across physical and visual touchpoints.

04 / Concept Lab

Color Has
a Memory

A self-initiated editorial study of how color changes the way a place is remembered.

Focus: Creative Direction · Photography · Editorial Sequencing
Medium: Digital Photography · Moving Image · 1:1 Carousel
Locations: Japan · Italy · Eastern Sierra · Oaxaca
Status: Independent / Ongoing

01 / Premise

Color becomes a wayfinding system.

Across places and moments, I noticed that color often remained more vivid than geography. Red held heat, enclosure, and ritual. Blue held distance, air, and movement.

02 / Edit

Sequence by sensation, not destination.

The photographs are edited by chromatic rhythm: compression gives way to openness, saturated red dissolves into blue, and architecture shifts into atmosphere.

03 / Outcome

An authored visual language.

The resulting square sequence turns personal photography into an editorial system, demonstrating image selection, cropping, pacing, color direction, and narrative restraint.

Process artifact / Working edit

The direction is visible in the edit.

Recurring color and shifts in scale guide a deliberate transition from enclosure to release.

Abstract red light and shadow — [SEQUENCE] A six-frame edit testing repetition, contrast, human scale, and the red-to-blue transition.

Red lamp and geometric shadow — [SEQUENCE] A six-frame edit testing repetition, contrast, human scale, and the red-to-blue transition.

Signal red Vermilion Oxide Natural dye Cobalt Distance blue

[PALETTE] Colors sampled from the edit become the organizing device rather than decorative accents.

Red lamp casting an architectural shadow — 01 / Red as objectColor occupies space.

A repeating red passage receding toward two figures — 02 / Red as rhythmRepetition becomes memory.

People observing a large red painting in a museum — 03 / Red as witnessThe body completes the field.

Rows of yarn transitioning from black through ochre and red — 04 / TransitionPigment becomes material.

Nadia wearing cobalt beneath an expansive blue sky — 05 / Blue as scaleThe frame opens.

06 / Blue as motionMemory refuses to stay still.

A small car moving through the monumental Eastern Sierra — 07 / DistanceColor recedes into atmosphere.

What it demonstrates

An ability to originate a visual thesis, identify its strongest evidence, and translate personal photography into a coherent editorial system.

A potter shaping a vessel by hand against a vivid blue wall in Oaxaca — Clay + gestureForm shaped by hand

Weaving studyRepetition held in the body

Hands lifting ochre yarn from a natural dye vat — Process detailPigment enters the fiber

Terracotta vessels and tools inside a pink Oaxaca workshop — Workshop studyClay, color + working space

About

A creative eye.
A producer’s brain.

I’m Nadia Nsotaku, a creative producer and experience designer working between the first spark of an idea and the moment people step inside it.

My path into creative work is unconventional and useful. A background in operations taught me how to build structure, anticipate friction, earn trust across teams, and carry an idea through the hundreds of decisions between concept and reality.

Through AlcheMe Studios, my independent creative practice, I explore how story, space, food, culture, and visual language can shape what people feel. I’m drawn to work that makes ideas tangible and turns participation into connection.

Concept developmentCreative productionExperience designArt directionVisual storytellingCreative operations

Download Portfolio Deck (PDF) ↗

Let’s make something people remember

Have an idea?
Let’s give it a world.

nadiansotaku@gmail.com

Available for creative production, art direction, brand experiences, and experience design.

Visceral first.I build environments across story, space, and food to evoke emotions you can feel before you can name.

Ideas made tangible.

Culture
by Design

Into the
Kelp Forest

Cross
Pollination

Color Has
a Memory

Creative thinking,
built to happen.

Find the human truth.

Give the idea a world.

Make every detail real.