KarlaMarie Cochran

About

Karla Marie "Karlita" Cochran is a New Orleans-based Latina entrepreneur, PR strategist, event producer, dance educator, writer, photographer, and community builder who runs five interconnected brands and still shows up to every room fully present (coffee intact). Known as Karlita, she is the founder and director of Spotlight Strategy Group, a boutique PR, marketing, and design agency built for bold founders and C-suite executives in growth mode. She leads media strategy, press campaigns, executive positioning, and crisis communications, with client placements in outlets including Forbes and Inc. Her crisis work has earned recognition from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Her sweet spot is the story other people miss... the human angle that makes an executive quotable and a brand impossible to ignore. She is also the founder of Studio Shakti NOLA, a creative hub and event venue in the Faubourg Marigny, where she plans and produces everything from intimate milestone celebrations to full cultural festivals. As the founder of Las Fridas Krewe, New Orleans' first Latin American Mardi Gras krewe, she builds large-scale community events from the ground up, including festival programming, parade production, sponsor relationships, and the kind of logistics most people never see but always feel. For Karlita, event planning is equal parts vision, hospitality, and operations. Her roots run deep in both communications and events. She spent nearly 18 years as Director of Communications and Development for a New Orleans nonprofit, where she produced signature fundraising galas and community events while leading brand messaging, donor and community storytelling, and audience growth, part of 26 years total in marketing and communications. From black-tie galas to street festivals, she plans events that raise real money, move audiences, and stay true to the culture they celebrate. She is fluent in the language of both the boardroom and the festival grounds, and she is especially strong on multilingual, multicultural messaging that actually reaches diverse audiences. She teaches cultural dance at Tulane University and Studio Shakti, and she holds board seats with the Bywater Marigny Business Organization and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), where her advocacy shapes how she talks about entrepreneurship, burnout, and building from a place of healing rather than hustle.