Sarah Ekenberg, Founder and CEO
Meet Your Partner in Growth
Maakr founder and CEO Sarah Ekenberg’s nearly 20-year, award-winning career has centered around raising brand awareness, market leadership position, reputation, and ultimately growth for the companies she’s represented by building strategic PR, communications, and marketing programs and campaigns that deliver engaging and relevant narratives. The consistently high-quality strategies and deliverables produced under her leadership, along with her ability to drive collaboration, have led to consistently strong results.
Deep Experience & Expertise
Sarah’s career has provided her the opportunity to work across a spectrum of industries, including medical, aerospace & defense, automotive, consumer products, wearables, robotics, and many others. With a keen understanding of industry intricacies, she adeptly identifies company differentiators and excels at weaving them into captivating storylines that capture the interest of target audiences.
Her experience includes almost 10 years at technology-enabled digital manufacturing powerhouse, Protolabs, where she built and led the company’s PR function that helped grow the company from $99M to nearly $500M in her time there. Additionally, she led the company’s partnership efforts, and also established, built, and oversaw the company’s Cool Idea Award program, in which she worked closely with product startup founders across industries to help bring their promising new product ideas to market and garner media coverage for them and Protolabs. Sarah has captained relationships, partnerships, and projects with companies including Autodesk, Solidworks, GE Additive, MIT, NASA, high-profile events including the Met Gala and SXSW, and influencers, celebrities, and entities including Mythbusters host Adam Savage, YouTuber The Hacksmith, Discovery Channel’s BattleBots, Paralympic athlete “Monster” Mike Schultz, and more.
Passion + Creativity = Success
Sarah brings a true passion for working with innovators to raise brand awareness and spur growth for their companies. Much like the inventive and entrepreneurial essence embodied by the companies she serves, a fundamental driver to her career success has been her creative, resourceful, collaborative, and strategic approach. This distinctive mindset consistently generates valuable opportunities that enhance and elevate the entities she partners with. Sarah has received accolades for her skills and successes, including recognition by AdFed as a top talent redefining the marketing and PR space.
Empowering Tomorrow’s Innovators: An Advocate for STEM Education Initiatives
Sarah is also a proponent of the importance of supporting and fostering STEM education learning opportunities and programs among youth, a key factor in sustaining the talent pipeline for the innovative roles increasingly critical to prosperous career opportunities and economic growth. At Protolabs, Sarah was a founding member of the Protolabs Foundation and was selected to lead the volunteer-based initiative designed to give back, develop and foster STEM education, and strengthen local communities.
