Martha Almy is a strategic creative force with 25+ years of shaping culture through storytelling. From visionary collaborations to cutting-edge installations, she creates experiences that blend digital, interactive, and place-based media, pushing boundaries to transform how we engage with the world and each other.
Martha began her career at a time when film, media, and design lived in separate lanes and the internet had just begun to hum. Trained in filmmaking and drawn to what might happen when story moved off the wall and into shared space, she worked on fashion shows, built early websites, and experimented with projection and light in basement music venues across New York while earning her MFA in Film at the Tisch School of the Arts. As new technologies came online, she saw an opening. Media did not have to stay siloed. Story could move across formats, into public space, and into conversation with its audience. That instinct toward integration has shaped her work ever since.
She has collaborated with leading filmmakers and top-tier experiential design teams, bringing story, technology, and space into the same frame. Over a twenty-year career she has guided complex projects for major cultural institutions and global brands, shaping work that lives in public and reaches broad audiences. Before starting her own studio, she served in executive roles at Second Story, Gallagher & Associates, and Donna Lawrence Productions. Her work is defined by the ability to hold big ideas and practical realities at once, aligning vision with execution and assembling teams that can carry both.
In 2022, she founded Half Sister Studio with a mission: to create experiences that make a real connection. It’s not just about the tech—it’s about using the right tools, the right team, and bringing stories to life that genuinely resonate with audiences. A recent standout? A data-sensitive, artist-driven media installation at Portland International Airport, blending cutting-edge tech and immersive storytelling to captivate audiences. The studio combines innovative design and technology with engaging content, unlocking the deeper 'why' of stories and pushing the boundaries of connection and discovery. At its core, the process is about people—community, engagement, and building relationships that stick. Martha excels at assembling teams that work with purpose, precision, and a whole lot of humor.
Passionate about creative rebellion, Martha thinks alot about human connection and condition, climate change, mobitecture, the power of place, feasting as intervention, women’s rights, Earth cleanup, education and empathy. Based on the West Coast, but often East, you’ll find her daydreaming, gardening, writing, doodling, cooking, hosting, Zooming, and staying radically optimistic about the sheer awesomeness of being alive.
SELECT CLIENTS
Superior Court of California, LA County
Portland International Airport
Destination Crenshaw
SFMOMA
National Civil Rights Museum
The Palace Museum (Beijing)
New York Public Library
Destination Crenshaw
GLBT Museum
Armenian American Museum
City District 8 (Los Angeles)
Holland America Line
Microsoft
Nokia
Coca-Cola
IMG Exhibitions International
National Building Museum
Friends of the Children
MIT Sloan School of Management
St. Louis Feldman Holocaust Museum
Walt Disney Imagineering
SELECT AWARDS & PUBLICATIONS
Awards
AAM MUSE Award
Communication Arts
Communicator Awards\
DSE APEX Awards
HOW International Design Award
SEGD Global Design Awards
UX Magazine Awards
Publications
New York Times
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
Wall Street Journal
Communication Arts
AdWeek
Wired
Boston Globe
EDUCATION
MFA, Directing and Film Production, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
BFA, Painting and Art History, Maine College of Art
martha@halfsisterstudio.com
