About Me
Cherie Carter
With extensive leadership experience and a deep passion for creativity,
I bring a powerful blend of knowledge and expertise in design and online media.
Introduction
My life has taken me in a lot of directions: building a career in marketing, expanding my photography portfolio, and becoming a children’s book author. Looking back, it all makes perfect sense. Every version of me has been driven by the same thing: the need to create and tell a story well.
Background & Education
I grew up in Ohio and moved to Tennessee for college, spending four years at the University of Tennessee before transferring to Austin Peay State University for my final year. I graduated with a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in painting and a minor in Marketing—a combination that predicted everything that came after.
I’ve always been drawn to the outdoors. It’s where I feel most alive and most creative. More than fifteen years in the running community, road races, triathlons, and adventure races across the country taught me to push through, stay present, and pay attention to the world around me. Five years on the water with the Nashville Rowing Club added another layer: early mornings, hard work, and a quieter kind of focus.
Eventually I landed at Odyssey Behavioral Healthcare, where I serve as Vice President of Marketing. Throughout my career, I’ve built and led marketing teams, managing everything from SEO and paid search to websites, social, graphic design, branding, and video. Marketing has always pushed me and my teams to experiment. We’ve explored podcasting, video concepts, and now we’re diving into ways to utilize AI. It’s an industry where the tools keep changing, and staying curious is the only way to keep up.
MarketingPhotography
My camera is rarely far from reach. I’ve taken a lot of really bad photos over the years. But someone once told me, “The only way you get better is by taking more pictures.” So that’s what I do. I’m drawn to colorful, unexpected compositions, the flare of light at golden hour, and those fleeting moments of true emotion you can’t recreate. Photography is how I process what I see and feel, turning moments into something I can hold onto and share. One frame at a time.
View PhotosAuthor & Illustrator
Writing and illustrating children’s stories started as a creative experiment—a studio art background meets a lifelong love of animals and imagination. Kitty Carter Finds a Home was my first adventure into it, and the joy of bringing that story to life through rhyme and digital illustration led to more. It’s one of those creative outlets that surprised me with how much it feeds the rest of what I do.
Learn MoreStudio Work
After years focused on photography and digital illustration, I started working with clay in 2020. Pottery has become a grounding ritual, challenging me in ways I didn’t expect. Painting, my first love from my studio art days, is something I’m eager to return to. These aren’t just hobbies—they’re where I experiment, fail, learn, and remember why I fell in love with making things in the first place.