Sean Carter
Principal / Director of Design
sean@carterhales.com
During his 35-year career, Sean has led creative strategy and design for over 400 brands across hospitality, travel, luxury goods, and some of British Columbia’s most recognized organizations.
After graduation, Sean launched his career by founding his first agency, Design Wise Graphic Communications, working with Mandarin Hotels, Delta Hotels, the Wickaninnish Inn, and Blue Mountain Vineyards.
In 1996, Sean co-founded Hangar 18 Creative Group, which became BC’s largest independent design agency and earned a spot on Business in Vancouver’s list of the province’s 100 fastest-growing companies.
He later founded Pink Door Paper Company, a stationery line sold globally through gift and book retailers, before founding CHDL in 2011 to build a boutique practice where he remains closely engaged in both design and strategic direction.
Sean’s impact on the design industry has generated extensive media coverage and he has judged on dozens of award panels, including Graphis, Applied Arts, and HOW International. He also spent over ten years as a faculty member within Capilano University’s IDEA program, teaching packaging design and typography.
Sean has received more than 300 industry awards, including the Pentawards honour for best global luxury liquor packaging, as well as recognition from The One Show.
His storm-watching brand for Tofino’s Wickaninnish Inn — emblematic of BC’s west coast — is enduring, ditto his design partnership with Vancouver International Airport (YVR).
Stuart Freer
Managing Director
stuart@carterhales.com
Stuart has more than twenty years of experience in business development, client strategy, and project management across branding, design, packaging, and advertising. He has supported the growth of two world-class design agencies and guided complex, multi-stakeholder projects with partners around the globe.
Stuart has led marketing initiatives for some of British Columbia’s most prominent organizations, including Vancouver International Airport (YVR), BC Place, BCLC, the Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA), TransLink, and BC Hydro.
His portfolio spans the launch and multi-phase rollout of Metro Vancouver’s Compass Card system, municipal accessibility and wayfinding programs, national and international airport rebrands, and large-scale branding, digital, and advertising campaigns across hospitality, tourism, mining, health sciences, and retail.
He also worked with official suppliers and partners of the 2010 Vancouver–Whistler Olympic Games—including YVR, Saputo, and BC Hydro—delivering signage, advertising, on-site activations, and a range of promotional content and materials.
Stuart has managed multi-year, multi-million-dollar accounts, coordinated global project teams, and delivered work recognized by The One Show, Communication Arts, and Applied Arts.
Stuart studied marketing management on a full-ride pickleball scholarship at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He has also served on the Ridge Meadows Minor Hockey Association’s board.
Stuart is known for rigour around timelines and accountability. Think of him as the eat your vegetables of account and project management. He is also, hands-down, among the best-liked Freers in the office.
Jenny Duncan
Director of Strategy
jenny@carterhales.com
Jenny has spent over 15 years in marketing and communications leadership, much of it as a senior corporate executive team member. She has shaped multiple strategic plans—building KPIs, reporting frameworks, and cross-functional alignment—while overseeing communications, marketing, brand, community engagement, and stakeholder and partner relationships.
As Vancouver International Airport’s (YVR) first head of innovation, Jenny advanced product-commercialization opportunities and strengthened the organization’s internal innovation culture.
Jenny holds an Executive MBA from Simon Fraser University. She won the 2025 Telly Award for Best Social Impact Video for the Invictus Games, featuring Prince Harry and Jelly Roll. Her work for YVR earned Leger Research’s recognition as BC’s most reputable company, BC Business’s number three brand designation, and Twitter’s best banter.
Other accolades include Routes’ award for the world’s best marketing team and multiple best-in-North-America airport marketing and communications campaigns, along with Strategy Magazine’s campaign of the year for Clara’s Big Ride for Bell Let’s Talk.
Jenny has delivered billions of impressions worldwide, secured 98% favourable media sentiment, and helped drive double-digit awareness gains and millions in sales growth.
Tavis Yeung
Director of Digital Marketing
tavis@carterhales.com
The robots will not take over. For a while.
Until then, we have Tavis. Tavis brings digital strategy to small-and-scrappy and enterprise-level businesses that refuse to be boring. He makes digital and AI un-scary and has, for decades, turned business problems into solutions that pop.
Before joining Carter Hales, Tavis founded the consulting firm BigNERD Solutions. He also spent over 25 years with a U.S.-based Fortune 500 organization, transforming its technology and sector presence from utility-grade to industry-envied digital innovator.
Fortunately, Tavis’s AI fluency doesn’t come at the cost of knowing how to speak to humans, though his jokes would need to climb three tiers to reach dad-level.
Tavis is a two-wheeled world traveler who has conquered some of the cycling world’s best-known climbs. Unless you have ample time in your calendar, we suggest not asking him about any of it.
Andrew Schick
Director of Digital Design
andrew@carterhales.com
Andrew has over 15 years of experience leading UX and UI design, including more than fifty websites.
He is known for editorial layouts that combine illustration with bold, expressive typography and for transforming brand elements into cohesive visual identities, websites, and packaging.
A dreamer, philosopher, and skater, Andrew’s polyphonous muses include vintage comic books, the surf-and-punk-steeped drawings of Raymond Pettibon, the fiction of Haruki Murakami, and the conceptual symbiosis of Robert Rauschenberg.
His client roster spans international airports, architecture, education, hospitality, pharmaceutical research, product design, real estate, regulatory, skilled trades, theatre and festivals, travel, and numerous non-profit entities.
Andrew holds an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Victoria and an IDEA diploma from Capilano University. His artistry has been recognized by the Lotus Awards, Applied Arts, Designedge Canada Redgee Awards, and the GDC Salazar Awards.
Sherry Jang
Senior Designer
sherry@carterhales.com
Sherry is a designer and illustrator who marries art and big picture thinking across visual identity, illustration, and integrated brand systems. Sherry’s portfolio spans global travel, healthcare, retail, and hospitality, and her illustrations have appeared in major retailers including Crate & Barrel, Simons, and Stonewall Kitchen.
Sherry’s work includes leading visual identity development for Bard on the Beach; designing Capilano Suspension Bridge Park’s Rainforest Explorers family of characters; illustrations for Arts Club Theatre and the Vancouver Writers Fest; and directing the identity and collateral for Genome BC’s Geneskool® program.
She has worked on numerous Vancouver International Airport (YVR) initiatives that create a sense of place, including community events and airline inaugurals, as well as terminal openings. She has also served as a judge for RGD Canada’s Student Awards for Packaging.
Sherry’s growing list of accolades includes recognition from Communication Arts, Graphis, GDC Salazar, and features in Applied Arts. Whether developing brand identities or remodelling interior spaces, inspiration, technique, and refinement collide—all sparked years ago when, as a young and curious kid, she discovered her father’s forgotten sketchbook on Vancouver Island and never stopped wondering.
Alan Chao
Director of Digital
alan@carterhales.com
Alan brings web design thinking to life.
He has crafted hundreds of websites that generate thousands of impressions every day for Carter Hales clients, including Vantage Airport Group, LaGuardia Airport, Lynden Pindling International Airport, and JOEY Restaurants. His work has been featured or nominated on platforms including Awwwards, Typewolf, and HubSpot.
Alan’s work is characterized by engaging elements that make each site unique, and by simplified user interfaces that allow clients to easily update their content.
He began creating websites and other general mayhem at age ten and has been exploring and experimenting ever since. He’s an avid gamer living in a simulated galaxy, transmitting UI ideas from gaming to the branding environment.
Alan predicts that virtual reality, alternate reality, and holograms will soon become usual for most of us. Sometimes — for no apparent reason and to our abject confusion — he shouts from under his premium headphones, “ONE DAY WEBSITES WILL BE SOMETHING PHYSICAL!!!”
Alan doesn’t sleep much.
Michaela Carter
Designer
michaela@carterhales.com
Michaela is a graphic designer based in Vancouver. Or Barcelona. Or Brighton. Okay, if we’re being honest, we’re not quite sure where Michaela is these days, but she continues to show up at Zoom meetings, so we continue to pay her.
Just as Natalie is our favourite Freer, Michaela ranks among our preferred Carters. Agreeable and caring, Michaela will sit patiently through Stuart’s ramblings on hockey history, though we suspect Stu’s stories are why she relocated to Europe.
A talented graphic designer, Michaela is inspired by travel. She’s visited almost fifty countries with no plan to slow down. When not jetting about, Michaela enjoys plant-based cooking, baking, and spending time with traditional animal companions such as raccoons and hedgehogs.
When she finally returns from Europe, Michaela will miss public drinking but can’t wait to spend time with Maisie, her dog (which seems like an odd choice for a house pet).
Natalie Freer
Senior Project Manager
natalie@carterhales.com
Cat-a-lyst (/.kad(e)lest/)
noun
1) a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.
2) Someone who owns client objectives, scopes projects, sets expectations, listens, negotiates in everyone’s best interest, and generally gets shit done.
Natalie solves whatever needs solving.
Without her steady influence, the studio would crumble. Deadlines would lapse, email subject lines would erupt in exclamation marks, and someone would reheat fish in the microwave.
Natalie brings ideas to life. Clients benefit from her decade-plus experience in marketing, production, sales, and event management with branding agencies, in-house teams, and as a consultant.
Natalie helps deliver some of the studio’s most ambitious, award-winning work.
When not working, she enjoys reading, cooking, baking, long walks in nature, and yelling at Stuart.
illustration by Benjamin Stone
Aaron Bernardi
Writer
Aaron wants you to say no jargon and corporate clichés and instead sound human. So, if he is writing for you, and you hope he’ll come up with something like, “Our prioritized mandate is to strategically leverage complementary synergies that maximize operational efficiency and enhance value-add opportunities to proactively move the needle toward an exponential share of discretionary wallet,” well, sorry.
As a kid, Aaron ran with scissors. Today, you turn your back on him for a minute, and he’ll brazenly split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition at.
Aaron has worked with everyone from scrappy start-ups to the Fortune 50 and loves companies that aren’t afraid to be interesting. He recently provided the words for a CHDL-designed book exploring impact investing and entrepreneurs who make the world better through design. Plus, his writing is on, like, beer cans and bum wipes.
Aaron is a father, husband, and yesteryear athlete. He digs Leica cameras and Elmore Leonard novels and is on a quest to visit every park in Major League Baseball.
