My name is Saga Blane.
Bio
I guide people and organizations to their authentic expression.
I bring to this work a foundation in cultural criticism from my undergraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh (History of Art, first class), and my graduate studies at Yale School of Architecture in the Masters of Environmental Design (MED, Yen and Dolly Liang scholarship recipient) Program.
From there, I trained in communications craft in the world’s most exclusive apprenticeship: the WPP Fellowship program. I was lucky to learn from the industry’s top talent and given senior-level responsibilities from the jump. My core communications strengths emerged: brand strategy, copywriting, content creation, internal brand building, and employee engagement.
With WPP, I worked on global brands such as Unilever, CBRE, Shangri-La Hotels, BBVA, General Mills - and internally at Refinery29. I left WPP in 2018. As an independent consultant I counseled young, energetic brands like Daily Harvest and NOKA Organics and moonlighted as a copywriter for Facebook’s Global Client team, authoring thought leadership pieces on the future of beauty for the company. Throughout this journey, I awakened to the intuitive nature of my work through my own exploration of spiritual tools and energetic modalities.
Now, I guide clients to their authentic expression through my own practice / manifesto: FlowForm. I’m also a copywriter and creative strategist, building out content universes for purpose-driven start ups like Ada Marie.
I also work 1:1 in the corporate space: helping real estate agents at Official define their personal brand, and teaming up with performance coach Phoebe Ladenburg to wealth management agency Julius Baer empower workplace dynamics.
I am Finnish-American in my upbringing, a New York City girl at heart, and a mama to 2 small boys and an aging rescue pitbull. I zoom to you from my home in Tivoli, NY.
Saga means ‘story’ - and here is mine:
Chapter 1
A Girl between Worlds
From the very beginning, I was a mash-up. Young Finnish mom + an old American dad. Street-savvy New York City private school kid + a barefoot fairy child who foraged for mushrooms and berries among the birch trees. At my parents’ dinner table, many worlds came to me through my parents’ global human rights activist network. Sitting on the subway going to school, the many threads of human existence walked in and out of the doors. I read voraciously, anything with witches, traveling in my mind as well as my body. I learned there was not one world, but many - and I became one to walk into and between them.
To walk into a world, one must shapeshift. I practiced shapeshifting on the stage as a teenager intent on acting. I then took that into my real life: at 16 I lived in Nancy, France for a year, then went to university for History of Art in Edinburgh, with another exchange year in Madrid. I learned languages, soaked up culture ,and was adept at navigating an airport. But shapeshifting can be dangerous. When you take on so many skins and voices, you can all too quickly lose the heartbeat of your own true self. I worried: does a shapeshifter have a form of its own?
2011: I applied and got accepted to Yale School of Architecture for a two year Masters of Environmental Design. I was seeking external validation and, in doing so, quickly eroded my internal authority. In that pressure cooker, the breaking began. My beloved grandmother died. Whirling thoughts spun out of control and cascaded down as severe anxiety and hip pain. I fought to change, at great personal cost, an institution that runs on old world hierarchical paradigms. The breaking felt like death, because it was: a spirit death. It was a journey to the underworld that stripped away the skins I had taken on as my own, leaving me only my vulnerable core. I found my true form and planted my feet in it. It is in the underworld that we are reborn. Like Persephone, it was there I also found my king (hey, Jake).
Chapter 2
The Golden Ticket
Following graduation, a brief interlude in Minnesota - cold and jobless and friendless. A ‘wintering’ on many levels, yet it brought me my initiators: a teenage pack of tarot cards dug out of a closet, a gift of the The Artist’s Way, and an application to the WPP Fellowship.
The initiation.
The Fellowship was called Advertising’s Golden Ticket. It was a 3-year apprenticeship with the world’s largest holding company in Marketing & Communications. It was “golden” because those accepted were paid to move, as they wanted, across a portfolio of 300+ global companies: from old-school Advertising heavy hitters like John Walter Thompson, to the agencies at the forefront of innovation. It was a choose-your-adventure whirlwind: go anywhere in the world, create your own roles, be mentored by the best minds of the biz. You’d get the kind of responsibility that people normally get after decades of work in the industry. Plus, perks: the gluttony of wine and cheese at David Ogilvy’s chateau in France, the glow-up of being handpicked with only 6 others from over 2000 worldwide applicants (a storied .5% acceptance rate), and the destiny of a leadership position at one of their companies when you graduated.
These guys knew what they were doing. It was a good sell. I wanted in.
The admissions criteria, aside from demonstrated excellence in any field, was “a blend of right brain and left brain thinking”. A.k.a, this was a program for mash-ups! Finally! A box for my out-of-the-boxness! I loved it. On the Fellowship, I chose to go first back to London to learn the craft of branding with global clients like Chandon, Jaguar Landrover, and Reckitt Benckiser. Then, I returned home to NYC for a year in a media agency creating multimedia content creation, like a faux ‘comeback tour’ content series for Chex Mix featuring the Backstreet Boys. My final year, I worked alongside the co-founders of Refinery29, leading the definition and build out of their internal brand work.
For the first time in my life, I was not half in one world and half in another - or sitting in the in-between. In this world of mash ups, asked to shift shapes for each new project, I belonged. ’m grateful for the craft, and the belonging.
And while I was sharpening my skills in brand creation, communications strategy, and business know-how…
I was led, down the rabbit hole, to Spirit:
Chapter 3: A Spiritual Seeker
I’m a Gemini (ruled by the planet Mercury - that I work in communications is an astrological cliché). Geminis love tapas-style eating: a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We are the dabblers of the zodiac. I dabbled in all spiritual modalities. Yoga. Mindfulness. Meditation. Craniosacral therapy. Rolfing. Acupuncture. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Classic psychoanalysis. EMDR. Jungian analysis. Life coaching. Emotional Intelligence. Psychics, astrologers, people who mystically tap the unconscious mind. I led sharing circles, foraged for homemade tinctures in Central Park, and put my crystals out to bathe in the full moon.
There were times I immersed. I apprenticed first with a shaman, then with an herbalist. I trained in flower essences, started clowning around (literally - clown class), and dipped back into acting. I thank these teachers for opening the doors to what was really a remembering - to clearing and clarifying my own connection to Spirit.
Leaving WPP to do who-knows-what was like looking into a dark, deep well. I had no idea what lay on the bottom, but when I leaned over to take a peak, I heard the voice of Spirit calling me. Actually, I tried not to. My ego would have much preferred to stay. But then birds hit me in the face as I walked on the street and I got on the wrong subway train three times in a row and I basically couldn’t get through a normal day until I finally listened. Really! And when I did, channeled messages poured out into a notebook and launched me into the Great Mystery. Where I still am. Where we all are.
Chapter 4: A Guide to Authentic Expression
Before we get to the present day, one more apprenticeship (the biggest one of all) - Motherhood. Although already a dog mom, my first son was born in late 2018. My second, the summer of 2021. In the midst of the relentless, unpaid, soul fulfilling job of parenting - I also did some consulting work, with both bigger brands and small (wellness-oriented) “solopreneurs”. There was a pandemic. I took refuge on a mountaintop. There, I shifted to the more intimate model of coaching. We found a new home, overlooking the Hudson River.
The past few years, I have been rooting down in the Hudson Valley - weaving all these many threads into one beautiful tapestry.
I am a Mother and a Maker. A sharp-minded strategist and a soft, poetic writer. I am versed in the world of business and the world of spirit. I lead ceremonies, and corporate workshops, and if I’m honest (which I always am) - it’s basically me doing the same thing with different labels.
Whether you work with me a coach, a consultant, or a writer, I am here to help you go deeper within and express the heart of who you are to the world. Whether you’re an individual or an organization,
I guide you to your authentic expression.
