What I do
I’m the Chief Communications & Marketing Officer at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a major cultural institution currently under construction in Medora, North Dakota. My job is to translate institutional vision into something the public can see, feel, and experience — across exhibitions, the website, press, membership, ticketing, digital products, and the daily storytelling that introduces Theodore Roosevelt to a new generation.
Day to day, that looks like everything from leading press relations and spokesperson duties, to advising on permanent exhibition components, to selecting the ticketing and CRM platforms that will run the visitor business, to launching an AI-powered tool that lets researchers explore the Library’s collections through natural language. Building a presidential library from scratch is rare; getting to help shape every part of how it meets the world is a privilege.
How I got here
I came up at the intersection of communications and technology. In the mid-2000s I co-founded Emotive, a direct-marketing agency in Arlington, Virginia, where we built fundraising tools, advocacy platforms, and digital campaigns for political candidates and national non-profits — including the Pickens Plan, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, and dozens of governor and Senate campaigns. We wrote a lot of our own software, learned to ship fast, and got hooked on what good systems can do for a cause.
From there I went to Edelman as Vice President and Technical Manager, leading the design and rollout of Multiplier, Edelman’s proprietary Salesforce-based engagement platform, and delivering strategy work to clients like HP, Hyundai, Microsoft, BlackBerry, GE, Shell, and Pepsi. I learned how big brands actually move and what it takes to build technology that serves communications work rather than competing with it.
In 2014 I joined George Washington’s Mount Vernon as Vice President of Media & Communications, where I spent ten years on the leadership team of one of the nation’s most-visited historic sites. We rebuilt the website around content and SEO and grew it from 2.5M to 8M+ annual visitors. We launched an immersive virtual tour that has now reached 4M+ people with an 18-minute average dwell time. We produced Be Washington, an interactive theater that won a Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement. We grew e-commerce from $1.1M to $8.6M in six years. We migrated the platform to AWS, replatformed e-commerce, rebuilt the CRM, made award-winning short films, hosted heads of state, and produced a magazine and an audio tour. It was the single best classroom I’ve had on what cultural institutions can be in the public imagination.
In 2024 I joined the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library to do it all again — this time, from before the doors open.
What I care about
I care about the moment a visitor walks into an institution and gets it. The exhibition, the story, the website, the email, the membership card — every touch is an interpretation. The institutions I’ve been part of have all sat at the intersection of history, democracy, and public memory, and the work has always been to make that material feel close, alive, and worth your time. That’s the through-line for me: visitor-centered, data-informed, story-led.
I’m also a deeply hands-on technologist when it serves the work. A lot of what I’ve shipped — from custom e-commerce, to AI collections tools, to my own side projects — comes from believing that communications leaders should be fluent enough in product and engineering to be useful partners, not just customers.
Off the clock
My wife Julie and I live in Dallas. We host a lot — dinner parties, Formula 1 race-day watch parties on Sundays, and full kitchens on Texas A&M home-game weekends. We spend most free weekends hiking somewhere within driving distance of DFW: Cedar Ridge and Arbor Hills locally; Hill Country, Broken Bow, Hot Springs, and Big Bend on longer trips. I grew up in Virginia, so the rest of the family is back east and we make the trip back often.
I’m an unrepentant tinkerer outside of work. Right now I’m building a virtual passport from a decade of TripIt data, and an AI-driven genealogical research engine that traces the Briney family tree through cached records and primary sources. Both started as “could I…?” and turned into proper projects.
Get in touch
The best way to reach me is by email at mkbriney@gmail.com or on LinkedIn. If you want the long version of the work, the CV is here — or download the PDF.