Founder & CEO
Hi, I’m Mariya. I’ve been in Public Relations and Brand Management longer than the world has known about the Dumbo Octopus and seen the Giant Squid. Perhaps, it was my coming on the scene that escalated their notoriety – one has never seen me and their PR person in the same room, if you know what I mean. Since then, I worked in the Marketing department at Airbnb and subsequently established my own firm, Mariya Pallais PR and Marketing. I’m not one to pigeonhole myself (unless we’re talking about interests, in which mine and my whole personality is SCUBA diving), so I traded my chinchilla for Pink Fins and broadened the services I provide. When I’m not wearing my pink fins or working on Pink Fins, I play padel tennis (too aggressively for my skill level) and pickleball.
Chief Content Officer
Hey, I’m Sam (the blue fins in all of the photos)! I studied PR in school, but I took a bit of a detour before I ended up back here. After school, I joined Teach For America, then went to grad school, and wound up as a Principal at a school in Phuket, Thailand (which was a bold move considering I’d never even eaten Thai food). As with fate, though, some things are simply meant to be—kind of like surfacing when you realize you’re low on air. Meeting Mariya was my full-circle moment, reminding me why I picked PR in the first place. Outside of diving and working, I love reading (ACOTAR, anyone?), doing recon on our upcoming trips, and beating Mariya in padel tennis.
Pink Fins Brand Management is an expansion. It’s the realization that work and life can not only coexist but complement each other in a way that brings us joy and generates a stronger investment in both. It is the understanding that personal branding is integral to the authenticity of a company and without it comes a lack of depth. One can never say Pink Fins doesn’t go deep enough.
Mariya started in the industry working with big companies like Airbnb, where she learned how to utilize brand voice and follow brand guidelines to create impactful marketing content. With this understanding of brands and people and how they’re intertwined, she founded Mariya Pallais PR and Marketing, because a robust marketing strategy goes hand in hand with PR (quite like a diver and her air supply). As her clients grew and the market changed, Mariya has continued to evolve with them. Her relentless pursuit of professional development and commitment to excellence allows her to meet her clients where they are and walk with them on the path to success.
In the spirit of persistent improvement, we now welcome the era of Pink Fins Brand Management, as well as a new partner, Sam. As our team has grown, so have the skill sets that we possess. We are now able to offer a full brand management suite. We have also injected our interests and personalities into this new branding (just wait ‘til you see all of the cool pictures of sea creatures Sam has taken), with the belief that authenticity and innovation are the keys to success.
PS: It’s called Pink Fins because they’re more disruptive than blue (sorry Sam).
