Siena Palese

Hello, and welcome to my portfolio.

Since I was little, I’ve been chasing the essence of human emotion and connection. At five, I developed an unlikely affinity for William Blake's The Tyger and The Lamb. Soon after, I picked up a pen. I haven’t put it down since.

I started with poetry. In middle and high school, I joined every writing workshop I could find, including a month-long program in Scotland at the University of St Andrews. That passion for the written word led me to the University of Iowa, where I studied in small workshops with some of the most talented young writers in the country and a published author at the helm. While there, I wrote a thesis on Toni Morrison, Black agrarianism, and historical trauma. I also expanded into long-form fiction, with several of my short stories published during my time at Iowa.

Then came Oxford, where I studied English literature among the stones and shadows of its long tradition. I wasn’t quite ready to leave the UK behind, so I returned to St Andrews for a master’s in business management. There, I began to braid storytelling into strategy. My dissertation, titled Motivational Boundary-Setting in AI-Augmented Creativity: How Generative AI Shapes Intrinsic Motivation in Artistic Practice, explored how creativity shifts under machine influence and what that means for authorship, agency, and the act of making.

I’ve written copy that sells, essays that question, and strategies that give language to vision. I’ve worked with artists, researchers, founders, and brands. I write with intention. I revise without ego. I listen closely.

This portfolio is a collection of translation. People and ideas, businesses and beliefs, shaped into language that is digestible, beautiful, and unmistakably human.

James Joyce