Meet Team Bonnie
The Core Team
Founder & Visionary
The Big Cheese. ;)
Bonnie Christine
Hello! I’m Bonnie, the heart and soul behind our creative business. I started this journey with a simple mission: to help creatives make a living doing what they love. Today, I’m proud to lead a team of amazing women who share this vision.
My days are filled with designing, teaching students the art of surface design, and hosting the Professional Creative podcast.
When I'm not in the studio, you can find me gardening in the Smoky Mountains, playing with my family or curled up with a good book and an oatmilk latte. I'm thrilled to share this journey with you, whether through our courses, products, or a simple hello across the web. Let’s make something beautiful together!
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Our Systems and Processes Wizard
Lisa Jacobs
As Chief Operating Officer for Team Bonnie, Lisa Jacobs oversees business operations and helps lead the team. Renowned for providing crystal-clear solutions to clients while growing profitability, promoting business sustainability and enterprise-level growth, Lisa prides herself on delivering exceptional quality and innovation that drive our company initiatives forward!
Executive Assistant
Conductor of the Bonnie Train
Tessie Snow
Tessie Fay Snow is Bonnie Christine's executive assistant, a.k.a. the wizard behind the curtain who keeps all the moving parts of Bonnie’s life in order. Whether she’s wrangling the calendar or keeping the Mark Makers Mastermind running smoothly, Tessie’s got it covered.
A mom to teenagers and adult kids (so, basically a professional multitasker), she finds joy in home decorating and hosting dinner parties at her lake home in Central Minnesota.
If she’s not entertaining, she’s probably treasure hunting at an antique store and convincing herself she definitely needs that vintage lamp.
Program Director
Content librarian Extraordinaire
Nikkita Cohoon
As Program Director for Team Bonnie, Nikkita Cohoon thrives at the intersection of connection, collaboration, and community. As you make your way through Flourish, you can bet Nikkita is behind the scenes with her mug of tea and a smile on her face as she strives to make your experience the best it can be alongside Bonnie and the team.
A 2020 Immersion alum, Nikkita is a fellow artist and surface designer at Ritual Morning Studio where she shares art and teaches meditative sketchbook practices to elevate the everyday.
After work, you can often find Nikkita enjoying cozy couch time with her family and a stack of books or out on a walk chatting with a friend.
Program Administrator
Queen of Details
Ephia Covington
Ephia brings her exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail to Team Bonnie. She thrives on working behind the scenes, keeping track of all the details to ensure everything runs seamlessly. As the Program Administrator for Flourish, Ephia is dedicated to creating a positive, supportive experience for participants. She finds joy in contributing to a team that empowers artists to create beauty in the world!
Director of Licensing & Representation
Love Squad Leader
Kiley Bennett
Kiley Bennett is an artist, designer, and Director of Licensing and Representation at Team Bonnie Christine. She delights in research, strategy, and crafting the perfect pitch, blending creativity and professionalism to ensure Bonnie’s work is well-represented. An Immersion alumni and a former Expert, Kiley brings a deep understanding of the surface pattern design industry and the transformative power of a well-curated portfolio.
Based in Lexington, Kentucky, Kiley will be found spending time with her husband and son, diving into home renovation projects, and savoring her essential second cup of coffee.
Customer Success Supervisor
Memory Keeper
Ashley Rodgers
Ashley Rodgers is a lifelong artist, crafter, and memory keeper living in Virginia. With a passion for helping others, she delights in her role as Customer Success Supervisor for Team Bonnie.
A 2021 Immersion alum, she established Paper Hum to nurture others’ creativity and help them find peace in the process. Her work is inspired by her everyday life and offers a sense of peace and calm in an often busy world.
When she’s not creating you can find her doing yoga stretches, solving Sudoku puzzles, and counting airplanes in the sky.
Customer Success Champion
Community Sunshine
Mia Kindle
As Customer Success Champion for Team Bonnie, Mia Kindle finds joy in bringing creativity and care to the community she loves. Whether she’s brainstorming fresh ideas or helping others navigate their creative journeys, Mia approaches every task with attention to detail and genuine warmth.
A 2022 Immersion alum and Love Squad member (2023-2024), she draws endless inspiration from life in Montana, where she enjoys coffee-filled meadow walks, wildflower gathering, antiquing, and camping with her family.
Alongside her role with Team Bonnie, Mia continues to grow as an artist, embracing the joy of lifelong learning through lettering, gardening, and illustrating.
Experience Director
Memory Maker
Erin Godbey
Erin Godbey has a unique gift for wrangling creatives and thrives in helping others achieve their goals. Her passion lies in creating beautiful experiences. With a focus on logistics and aesthetics, Erin serves as the shop lead for Flowerie.
Drawing on years of experience in event planning, she orchestrates all the events for Bonnie Christine, including Immersion Live and mastermind retreats. She is the director of Indie Craft Parade, a non-profit arts organization that supports creative entrepreneurs.
Erin lives in South Carolina with her husband, 3 children, and a pack of stray cats. She can’t resist old photos, impromptu picnics, and chocolate chip cookies.
Marketing Director
Analytics-Driven Workflow Creator
Jodi Rykse
Jodi Rykse serves as Marketing Director for Team Bonnie, combining her expertise in design, organization, and a love for data to help the team achieve its goals.
Based in South Florida, Jodi is married to her high school sweetheart and is a proud mom to two wonderful daughters. She’s passionate about creating streamlined systems and workflows that foster collaboration and efficiency, while also diving into the numbers to track performance and drive strategic decisions.
Outside of work, Jodi enjoys photography, family time, and finding beauty in the everyday. Her dedication to both creativity and analytics ensures every project is executed with excellence.
Lead Designer
Peaceful Vibe Creator
Rebecca Barreda
Rebecca Barreda is a multi-faceted creative and lead designer at Team Bonnie. With an eye for clean lines and thoughtful presentation, she works to create beautiful designs and course materials to help students become the creative business owners of their dreams.
When she’s not designing, you’ll find her exploring nature with her husband and dog, cozied up with a good book or hands-deep in her garden.
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Digital Marketing Specialist
Tech Nerd Extraordinaire
Jen Shannon
Jen, a multimedia artist from Northeast Florida, manages online strategies to enhance brand visibility, engage audiences, and drive growth through analyzing SEO data, creating strategies, and building fundamentals into workflows.
When not working, she explores a wide range of creative pursuits through her side hustle, Jen Shannon Creative Atelier, selling lathe-turned wood and resin creations and other woodwork at art markets.
Her artistic repertoire includes watercolor, oil, and acrylic painting, mixed media, crocheting, bullet journaling, illustrating, embroidery, pastel drawing, and polymer clay.
Jen is married to her high school sweetheart of 18 years and is a mom to four kids and a Sheltie named Phoebe. She is a first-degree black belt in Taekwondo, a Swiftie, a board game enthusiast, lover of all things Joshua Weissman, and a big fan of The Office.
Content Writer
Writing Ninja
Adriana Poythress
As Content Writer for Team Bonnie, Adriana creates and refines engaging content across multiple platforms, including blog posts, email newsletters, course materials, podcasts, webinars, and more. She enjoys collaborating with the incredible individuals who make up this team and working to serve the needs of our community of creatives.
In her free time, Adriana can be found painting custom watercolor portraits and enjoying a cozy cup of tea. Adriana also enjoys hiking, exploring local gift shops, or raiding the greeting card section at Trader Joe's.
Adriana lives in Leesburg, Virginia, with her husband and frequents California as often as possible to visit family and soak up the sunshine.
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The Expert Team
Ali Baecker
Ali Baecker is a self-taught printmaker & surface designer. An engineer by education, she uses the medium of block printing to explore pattern and surface designs and run the block printing studio 3 Dotted Penguins. She regularly teaches online workshops on block printing and pattern design to participants around the world. You can find Ali’s work as original block prints, screen-printed textiles, and stationery goods.
Ali lives in Zurich, Switzerland with her husband and small daughter–becoming a mother kickstarted Ali’s journey and is a large part of her why. When she’s not block printing or playing with patterns you can find her daydreaming about the far-away sea and traveling to near and far-away places.
Larimie "Xhico" Garcia
Larimie, known as Xhico to many, is a surface pattern designer creating from his studio in sunny California. With 30+ years of experience as an artist, designer, and photographer under his belt, he's now focused on the world of surface pattern design. In addition to operating a multidisciplinary design studio, he educates creative entrepreneurs and small business owners on how to level up their design skills and build better brands.
His curious and adventurous spirit and ability to work remotely allow him to work from his favorite places like Guatemala and Mexico. This year he will share his love for culture, art, and design education through a Design Retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico, curated for surface designers.
Zhay Smith
Our 2019 Immersion alum, Zhay Smith, is a New York-based personal stylist turned surface pattern designer. With an eye for beauty, she often uses photography as a jumping-off point for her work and incorporates bold elegant typography to make a statement. She is an avid learner with a playful spirit, who infuses her background in fashion, interior design, and fine art into her design work. Some of her work can be found on Minted.com.
Ashley Paggi
Ash Cascade is an artist whose bohemian/retro style evokes a polished yet gritty sense of place. Ash draws infinitely upon the adventures she takes with her husband and their two fierce little girls in the Pacific Northwest.
She took Immersion in 2020 and has since licensed her designs on fabric with Cotton + Steel, on children's clothing, outdoor gear, kitchen towels and cloth diapers. She has a huge passion for brand photography and plans to move into teaching that as well.
Lissie Teehee
Lissie is a mother, fine artist and designer and teacher in Oklahoma. She creates surface patterns, products, textiles, and other lovely works of art. Her aim is to celebrate the home and the nature surrounding our lives through all of the artwork that she creates. Every day, she collects little joys like laughter, the feeling of the light coming through the window, or a walk near the water on a hot, summer day. It is Lissie’s hope that her artwork can be a representation of the things that we love and cherish.
Emmi Kerkham
Emmi Kerkham is an illustrator and surface pattern designer from Melbourne, Australia. She loves to create bright and playful designs that bring a ray of sunshine to your day. Emmi’s work is all about celebrating and sharing the simple things in life that make her smile. If she’s not in the studio, you can find her getting lost in excellent stories, trying out a new recipe in the kitchen or hanging out with her super cute fluffy dog, Winston!
Colleen Underwood
Colleen is a watercolorist, mama of four, and a heart-felt coach for creatives. She is passionate about igniting hope in others through what is good and beautiful in her surface design work. If she's not painting or coaching, you can find Colleen putting down roots between the Smoky Mountains and salty ocean coasts of North Carolina with her sweet friends and family.
Jennie Whitaker
Jennie Whitaker is an artist and surface designer in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Her work is inspired both by grand adventures and by the extraordinary moments of everyday life. She designs, draws, paints and writes in her studio, Toboggan Avenue to create patterns that bring joy–a kind of shareable joy that is meant to be passed along to others.
Karen Mastriacovo
Karen is an artist creating under the name Hawk Moon Studio. After working many years as a childrenswear designer, she is now focused on creating patterns and art for interiors. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Erin Silliman
Erin is an artist and surface pattern designer living in the Portland, Oregon area of the beautiful pacific northwest. She loves creating heartfelt design as a visual treat for creative women. Her floral, holiday, and everyday patterns are featured on fabric, gift wrap, handmade goods and more.
Cassandra Zaniboni
Cassandra is a Mama + Surface Designer specializing in whimsical, nature-based fabrics, wallpapers and prints in Bend, Oregon. Drawing inspiration from the Pacific Northwest and her forest home, her artwork is infused with natural beauty and the everyday enchantment that comes from the magic of Motherhood. Endlessly following her curiosity and thirst for learning where every it leads.
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Jillian Nichole
Jillian is a licensed artist, illustrator and surface pattern designer based in Rhode Island of the USA. She has a profound connection to nature, divine femininity, and life's diverse experiences. Infused with a childlike sense of wonder, Jillian believes in the magic that lies just beyond our ordinary sight. From intricate artwork to captivating pattern collections, her creations exude a magical essence, blending detailed artistry with a whimsical and ethereal flair.
Cris Pliego
Cris Pliego is a Mexican artist and surface pattern designer based in New Zealand, working full-time as an illustrator for the country's largest souvenir company. Her vibrant and joyful surface patterns are inspired by her Mexican roots, global travels, and love for nature. She has successfully licensed her unique designs across various industries, always seeking to infuse joy and color into everyday life. When she's not creating, she enjoys going to art exhibitions, life sketching, hiking, meditating, journaling and visiting local markets & antique shops, always gathering new ideas and dreaming up new projects!
Melissa Lee
Melissa Lee is an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in the hilly forests of Northern California. Alongside doing freelance and art licensing work (she's a proud Riley Blake Designs fabric designer!), she spends much of her time cultivating her love of sharing what she knows and encouraging others to nourish their creative side through teaching online art courses on Skillshare (where she is a Top Teacher!). Melissa loves making patterns, character art, and watercolor paintings. She is endlessly inspired by animals and nature (whether living today or extinct), science fiction and fantasy, space, witchy things, and bees.
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Always bees.
