Kick Start Owner Stephanie Kulke has over 14 years experience in marketing and media relations and a track record for innovative and effective PR campaigns and marketing plans.  Her areas of expertise include PR, project management and patron loyalty programs.

Prior to launching Kick Start Marketing Chicago in 2010, Stephanie Kulke served as the Director of Marketing & Communications for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company.  She spearheaded the company’s branding project in partnership with the Arts & Business Council’s Business Volunteers for the Arts program. The results were praised by the Chicago Tribune as “Brain and buzz, Bumppo’s new forte.”  She also led the development of Remy Bumppo’s website redesign, which the Wall Street Journal named “A best theater website.”  Under her leadership, Remy Bumppo realized its highest grossing production to date, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and dramatically increased its subscription base from 200 charter subscribers to nearly 1,500 in just 5 years.

Previously, she was a project manager and media relations specialist at Carol Fox & Associates, where she led the PR and grassroots marketing plan for the hip-hop Shakespeare show The Bomb-itty of Errors at the Royal George Theater, a campaign that won a Golden Trumpet Award from the Publicity Club of Chicago.  She managed publicity efforts for the Museum of Contemporary Art Performances, Printer’s Row Book Fair, Chicago Park District’s Theater on the Lake, Art Chicago, The Chicago International Film Festival, Dance Chicago, and the  long-running The Vagina Monologues at the Apollo Theater.