Schools · Brand Strategy
Mount Vernon School
Ten years of brand building inside one of Atlanta's most innovative schools.
- Brand Strategy
- Creative Direction
- Environmental Design
- Campaign Strategy
The short version. Mount Vernon Presbyterian School is where Trey built his entire career before founding Roar. Ten years, from classroom teacher to Chief Brand Officer, and more than 300 projects a year. This is what a decade of deep brand partnership actually looks like.
Where they started. Trey joined Mount Vernon as a high school and middle school technology teacher. As the school leaned into innovation, launching the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation, now known as Mount Vernon Ventures, the brand need grew with it. He became Creative Director for the Institute, then Creative Director for the school itself, leading a team of creatives through more than 300 projects a year, from theater arts posters to full-scale capital campaign branding and messaging. In 2016 he joined the senior leadership team as Chief Brand Officer, responsible for both external and internal branding across all school and consulting efforts.
The move. The signature project of Trey’s career at Mount Vernon was the design of the new upper school building, which opened in 2019. He served on the school’s transition team researching best practices for innovative learning as it relates to spatial design, then led the environmental brand work throughout the building. Each learning community, called a neighborhood, was given a distinct color and number, with North and South as the wayfinding logic. Those colors cascaded through every surface of the neighborhood, becoming the shorthand students and teachers used to talk about where they belonged. Two academic floors each featured an identical maker and design engineering lab and a science lab, shared by the North and South neighborhoods. Connecting them was a section called the Bridge, given a more industrial character designated by black. Throughout the building, the team created graphical representations of the school’s cultural norms and values, hand-painted by a local sign artist.
What happened. The upper school opened in 2019 with 300 students. Going into the 2026-2027 school year, enrollment stands at more than 425.
By the numbers
- 10
- years of brand partnership
- 300+
- projects a year at peak
- 425+
- upper school students, from 300 at opening
Photo: Adam Goldberg Photography
The insider difference
You shouldn't have to explain your world to your brand partner.
Trey spent a decade inside an independent school before founding Roar. That changes what's possible.
