About Karla Hovde
Karla is proficient in various media including graphic design, web design, photography, social media, filming and editing, and more. Karla's artistic abilities include drawing, painting, paper cutting, pottery, and art history.
View her web design projects, graphic design projects, paintings, photography, and more.
Karla lived in Dhaka, Bangladesh from August 2015 to July 2016. She participated in an intense, full-time service internship as the Social Media Assistant for Basha Boutique, an organization that provides jobs for women coming out of human trafficking and helps break the cycle of poverty by providing education, counselling, and other social services for them and their children.
This experience provided Karla with practical skills to work in any number of fields relating to digital media. Karla has experience in applying the following skills in a professional, collaborative setting:
- Employing design and communication skills to dramatically increase the organization’s international social media audience.
- Monitoring social media sites daily, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
- Driving a 32% increase in Facebook followers (1738 to 2294), and 128% increase in Instagram followers (372 to 851) during her term.
- Creating high quality designs for social media campaigns, website, and print.
- Capturing and editing videos and photos of daily life, people’s stories, and events to make short promotional videos.
- Understanding social media’s role in supporting an organization’s social impact.
Karla is passionate about many human rights and social justice issues and integrating service into her career. She is proud to offer her talents to a cause she believes in. She has a medium proficiency in Spanish, an elementary understanding of Bangla, and the flexibility and communication skills that come from living and working in international settings.
Karla Hovde graduated in 2015 from Eastern Mennonite University with majors in Art and Digital Media, with a minor in Spanish and completed the Honors Program.
One of the most important and rewarding projects she worked on during college was creating with a class team To Wisconsin with Love: Offerings on Water, Land, and Culture, a student-made documentary connecting the degradation of West Virginia from coal mining, EMU's own peacebuilding and sustainability program, and a proposed open pit iron mine in the Penokee hills of Wisconsin. The plans for the mine have been abandoned. However a glance at the news shows this struggle for valuing clean water over money is far from over.
Karla spent three months living and traveling in Guatemala and Colombia in 2013. During her semester cross-cultural, she lived with a host family in Guatemala City and was immersed in the Spanish language while learning about the history, religion, and culture of Latin America. She has also traveled in the United States, Great Britain, and Northern Europe.