About MATRIARC
Where Purpose Meets Possibility
Purpose without direction stays aspirational. Possibility without structure stays abstract.
Matriarc lives in the space between the two. We help organizations shape the full arc of their brand – from what they stand for, to how that belief is felt in the world.
How We're Different
Matriarc is a collaborative agency.
Our team is senior by design — brand strategists, creatives, and marketing veterans who’ve worked inside agencies, led corporate teams, and built things independently. We don’t staff up with generalists. We bring in the people who’ve already done the thing.
We’ve operated across every kind of environment: big institutions with complex stakeholder dynamics, scrappy projects that needed to move fast, and everything in between. That range means we don’t get rattled by procurement processes or creative pivots. We know how to work with your internal team, your agency partners, your vendors — and we adapt to how work actually gets done, not how it’s supposed to get done on paper.
The REAL™ Framework
REAL™ is our operating lens — a framework built around Resonance, Expansion, Alignment, and Legacy. It’s how we move ideas from instinct to impact without flattening them along the way. And it’s the standard we hold ourselves to in every engagement, whether or not you ever see it by name.
How We're Different
Matriarc is a collaborative agency.
Our team is senior by design — brand strategists, creatives, and marketing veterans who’ve worked inside agencies, led corporate teams, and built things independently. We don’t staff up with generalists. We bring in the people who’ve already done the thing.
We’ve operated across every kind of environment: big institutions with complex stakeholder dynamics, scrappy projects that needed to move fast, and everything in between. That range means we don’t get rattled by procurement processes or creative pivots. We know how to work with your internal team, your agency partners, your vendors — and we adapt to how work actually gets done, not how it’s supposed to get done on paper.
Leadership
Dee Heffernan,
Founder & Principal of Matriarc
Dee built Matriarc on a simple observation: most organizations know what they want to say, but struggle to make it mean something. With a background spanning design and strategy — and experience inside agencies, corporate teams, and startups — she’s worked across enough contexts to know that the problem is rarely the idea. It’s the gap between vision and execution.
After two decades leading brand strategy, creative direction, and marketing at the executive level across education, healthcare, retail, finance, and early-stage ventures, she stopped waiting for the right conditions to do the work differently.
At Matriarc, Dee sets direction, leads client relationships, and assembles the right senior team for each engagement.
Dee’s TEDx talk, How to Stop Highlight Reel Living, became the foundation for the REAL™ Framework — Matriarc’s strategic lens for brand clarity and authentic positioning.
Leadership
Dee is a graduate of University of Chicago, where she studied Human Development and played varsity basketball. Her experience navigating performance, pressure, and identity later informed her TEDx talk, How to Stop Highlight Reel Living, which became the foundation for the REAL™ Framework, Matriarc’s strategic lens.
Beyond Matriarc, Dee contributes communications leadership to community initiatives throughout Chicagoland and has served on the University of Chicago LGBTQ+ Alumni Board of Directors.
Dee Heffernan, Founder & Collaborative Lead
Dee has spent over two decades operating at the intersection of brand strategy, creative direction, and executive leadership. She has served as a Chief Marketing Officer, Creative Director, and Brand Strategist, leading organizations through growth, repositioning, and moments of meaningful change across education, healthcare, consumer goods, retail, finance, and early-stage ventures.
Raised in an entrepreneurial family, Dee grew up inside the realities of building and sustaining a business. That early exposure shaped how she works today: pragmatic, decisive, and attuned to how vision translates into execution. She brings a founder’s mindset to every engagement.
Dee is often described as the spark that moves work forward. Known for seeing what’s needed and what’s missing, she has a rare ability to cut through noise, identify opportunities, and map the steps required to move work forward.
As Collaborative Lead at Matriarc, Dee sets direction, leads client relationships, and assembles senior partners tailored to each engagement.
Our Team
Matriarc keeps a deep bench – but not a generic one. Every engagement is staffed intentionally: the right strategist, the right creative, the right specialist for what the work actually requires.
Our network runs deep: brand strategists and culture consultants, creative directors and UX leads, executives who’ve navigated big pharma and big commerce, non-profit, civic orgs, and everything in between.
Let's have a conversation.
Reach out and speak with a senior advisor about the change you’re seeking.