Public Relations specialist Ava Van Snow has always had big ambitions. Despite a series of challenges during her childhood in Renton—a father who walked out when she was young, being raised by her immigrant grandparents who fled Vietnam during the war, and depending on government assistance to survive—she set her sights on pursuing a career that would allow her to tell other people’s stories.

“There were a lot of hardships,” says Van Snow, who opened her full-service public relations firm and photography business, Elevate PR Agency, earlier this year. “The only way out was going to college and creating a life for myself. I went to school for
broadcast journalism and interned at KING-TV. I loved it, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do a small-town gig for a few years to work my way up to the city.”

In 2010, Van Snow noticed the increased use of social media and multimedia platforms for storytelling and marketing. “I jumped on that bandwagon,” she says, learning a set of cross-disciplinary skills (journalism, photography, marketing, social media, public relations, and graphic design) she predicted would be relevant in the future. After graduating from Seattle Pacific University (SPU) in 2012, Van Snow spent three months volunteering at an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, providing daily care for babies and disabled children. It was a formative experience.

“SPU teaches you how to engage with culture and change the world,” she recalls. “I learned that I could make a career but also make a difference in the world. I wanted to give a voice to the voiceless.”

Returning to the United States, Van Snow started looking for work. “I applied for 275 jobs and only heard back from seven,” she says. She was a runner-up for three interviews, and when she finally secured a position, it initially felt out of left field. The job was with the City of Snoqualmie, working on its communications and marketing strategies, social media, newsletters, the community calendar, the website, and more. “I got to learn from the bottom and move up,” Van Snow recalls. “Having tenacity, grit, and passion were important. I learned to take rejection as redirection.”

“Having tenacity, grit, and passion were important. I learned to take rejection as redirection.” —Ava Van Snow, Elevate PR Agency

From the City of Snoqualmie, Van Snow continued her trajectory in the civic sector, working as a communications specialist
at the City of Redmond for two years, then at the Lake Washington School District for six. During this time, Van Snow helped each organization rethink how it approached marketing by tapping into student, staff, and community knowledge to share news and tell important stories. The approach was so successful that she launched the Government Social Media Academy, traveling around the state to teach content creation workshops tailored to government professionals and school districts. “With government [agencies], there are so many budget cuts and layoffs,” Van Snow says. “People don’t have the luxury of having full-service marketing teams anymore.”

At the beginning of 2025, Van Snow decided to strike out on her own, launching Elevate PR to help businesses plan their marketing strategies, dig into their storytelling possibilities, and tap into new technology like artificial intelligence and drone photography. While she still offers the Government Social Media Academy, Van Snow says that she’s open to working with clients outside the civic sector. “I help people discover what it is they need to promote their business,” she explains. “We cover everything from creating content to designing graphics to taking headshots. It’s a one-stop shop!”

When she isn’t working, Van Snow spends much of her free time volunteering in the community, including organizing aid for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees; serving meals at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission; delivering socks, blankets, and other comfort items to her late grandfather’s former nursing home and hospice facility; and serving as the as the youngest community representative for the Independent Force Investigation Team of King County for the City of Bellevue Police Department.

Van Snow’s tenacity, hard work, and generosity of spirit help connect her work and philanthropic lives, both of which she approaches with a simple ethos: “One thing I always tell people is that we live in a world where so many things are so difficult right now. As hard as it is sometimes to be nice, people will always remember those moments when someone was kind.”