About Us
Welcome to Maple Creative 🌳
We're a design studio specializing in cyclical growth for creatives.
👋 Hello! I'm Ryan Clover,
I'm the founder and digital gardener here at Maple Creative. I'm also a dad, songwriter, and budding orchardist. Here's some of my recent projects:
- Website Design – Gwyn Wansbrough and Breakthrough Facilitation, a community based course for virtual facilitators and educators.
- Instruction Designer – Build Your Website Essentials, a 5 week cohort-based course based on the signature design process we use for our 5-20k business website projects.
- Designer & Operations Strategist – The Halt the Harm Network, Building a Stronger and More Connected Movement to Fight Oil & Gas, halttheharm.net
- Community Based Course Design for Garden Rhythm – a season long organic gardening course, gardenrhythm.com
- Website Design and Build, Center for Coalfield Justice
→ Do you want to become more savvy with your online marketing? Check out the mini-course 4 steps to getting a website that grows your business (free)
👋 Hello! I'm Friede Sander,
I'm an artist, herbalist, parent, and co-owner of Maple Creative. I'm passionate about design and am currently amazed that the moon not only creates tides in the ocean but also tides in mountains and cities. The skyscrapers in Manhattan grow and shrink 14 inches twice a day. Wow.
I am mostly involved in the visioning aspects of Maple, how we shift and grow as a business and as a family. I keep a pulse on our projects, book keeping and build and design some of our client sites too. You will often find me hosting various herbal webinars for our clients, which is my absolute favorite part about what I get to do with Maple.
👋 Hello! I'm Kevin Richardson,
I’m freelance consultant, writer, and community organizer with a background in environmental advocacy and a graduate degree in Japanese environmental history. I love running, being a dad to two small boys, and reading everything from physics to history.
- Strategic Campaign Support: Providing strategic, technical, and organizing support for grassroots leaders in the Halt the Harm Network who are fighting oil & gas pollution → halttheharm.net
- Event Planning & Hosting: Planning and hosting regular webinars and informative virtual “teatimes” for the American Solar Grazing Association → https://solargrazing.org/
- Website Design: Creating custom websites for individuals, small businesses, and nonprofit groups
- Communications & Outreach: Writing and developing email campaigns, website content, personal outreach to recruit members and supporters
👋 Hello! I'm AC Stauble,
I have the best jobs in the world! I work with Maple Clients to bolster their online communities and build connections. When I’m not doing online community organizing I’m growing herbs at my homestead in Central NY, creating handmade herbal products under the name Traveling Herb Farmer and teaching about herbal medicine. My podcast, the Plant Cunning Podcast offers a weekly deep dive with esteemed guests in the herbal, farming, magic, and spiritual communities. The main roles I have at Maple Creative are:
- Community Organizing: Working with clients who have online communities for their business, school or activist organization using the Circle platform to ensure each member or student is comfortable using the network, feels seen and heard and is encouraged to participate fully. I help participants make connections with others, answer questions, and make sure no one falls through the cracks.
- Event Planning & Hosting: Planning and hosting regular meetups, office hours, and educational events for clients. I have put the skills learned at Breakthrough Facilitation Training and years of in person event planning to facilitate engaging, meaningful and most importantly fun online events.
- Build Your Website Essentials: I offer student support for each cohort of our 5 week website design program at Maple Creative providing help with homework assignments, hosting weekly co-working sessions, office hours, meetups and engaging with participants on our Circle community.
👋 Hello! I'm Lindsay King,
I'm a writer, designer, and nonprofit leader. Along with supporting website projects at Maple, I work with ThirdPath Institute to support workplaces to create better paths to work-life integration, and I am also a freelance arts and culture journalist, where I write primarily about dance.
I have a graduate degree in Jewish and gender history. If I'm not watching dance or hanging with my kids, you can probably find me gardening or planning a new trip.
At Maple, I work on website design and content writing projects. I love discovering the best graphic and written tools to help clients build the communities they envision. My favorite part of the work is meeting and working directly with the unique and creative entrepreneurs and social leaders we work with at Maple.
I'm also the care plan and client retainer manager! If you're a client I'm often responded to your support tickets or chats.
Maple, A Brief History
In 2014, we decided it was time to start a family business. We debated all the various skills we had. Would we start an herbal product line? Become farmers? Learn a trade? Monetize a podcast? Ryan had been building websites for local anti-fracking campaigns for a few years and he was pretty good. Hum?
Ryan (and then Friede) began building websites by lantern light from an off grid cabin overlooking a slowly drifting river. Playfully called the "shabin"-- half shack, half cabin – it was home and office in 420 square feet.
We kept our computer charged at the neighbors barn, swam in the river during our breaks, and dug in the garden whenever we could.
Today Maple is hooked to 50 feet of solar panels and running out of it's very own barn 🙂 We have a team of 5 amazing people, an advisory group of experts, and support over 100 websites with our bespoke care plan service.
We've added marketing campaigns, assisting with online course development, online event coordination, and our very own Build Your Website Essentials cohort based course to our docket of "things we do".
In 2019 we brought on our first team member, and we've been growing slowly & steadily since then. Our team is well-paid, based in the U.S. and empowered to follow their passion in their work with Maple. We're proud to grow a business based on generosity and mutual support.
We are grateful for our staff, our mentors, clients, and the ideas that drive and fuel our work. If you resonate with our story I hope we can connect!
