Meet our leadership team


Kelly
Fletcher

CEO & Senior Strategist

Kelly has spent the past 15 years building Fletcher into a thriving national marketing and PR agency with a vision to influence behavior and enhance brand reputations. Working with regional, national and Fortune 500 companies, Kelly has 25 years in the full spectrum of integrated communications, specializing in the art and science of how people process messaging, problem-solve and make decisions. 

In 2017, she received the Gary McCormick Lifetime Achievement Award from the Volunteer Chapter of Public Relations Society of America. She graduated from Meredith College in Raleigh, NC with a bachelor’s degree in communications with a concentration in public relations.

Kelly is extensively involved in the East Tennessee community, having served in various leadership positions including board appointments with Second Harvest Food Bank, Knoxville Opera, Women’s Fund of East Tennessee, Susan G. Komen and Project GRAD.

Mom of Fletcher Kress (no, he’s not Fletcher Fletcher), Kelly is a lover of travel, football and all things culinary.

Kelly Fletcher: How our firm came to be

While living in Atlanta at the age of 28, I set out to purchase my first new car. It was one of the most frustrating experiences in my young consumer life. The predominantly male salespeople at the dealerships treated me like a second-class citizen and wanted to know when my husband was going to come look at cars with me.

I was so humiliated that I started calling dealerships to ask if they had a female salesperson I could speak with. I finally found one at CarMax, and she treated me with the level of respect and consideration I deserved.

That’s when I began to notice a void in the way marketers were communicating with female consumers. I was already in the agency business and became increasingly curious about how I could grow my knowledge around female consumer behavior and how women think and process information differently from men.

How did women make consumer purchasing decisions? Why were we an underserved market? Why did brands and businesses talk to us like we were delicate and needy?

Enter Jewelry Television, the national home shopping network based in Knoxville, TN.  I made the move to Knoxville as the first director of corporate communications and public relations. Here we studied female consumer behavior, listened to what customers were saying and built actionable campaigns around the research. Fundamentally, this is how marketing communications should always be done.

After a few years, I grew weary of the corporate environment. I had always dreamed of starting my own agency, and I joked with former colleagues that if I was ever able to realize that dream, I was going to call it “My Agency,” because we were going to do things differently.

I launched Fletcher in 2008 as a single mom when my then-employer agreed to sign on as my first client. Talk about scary times!

Fletcher initially existed to help brands connect with female consumers. We still do that, but we’ve come a long way since 2008 and our experience and expertise is far deeper.

Still headquartered in Knoxville, TN, we employ highly experienced communications professionals in several states. We serve businesses from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies in the business-to consumer, business-to-business and non-profit sectors.

Our culture is driven by my personal desire to help amazingly intelligent, working moms find their place in a business hierarchy that historically has not been kind to us. By fostering a sense of transparency, autonomy and humanness, we are doing just that.
And I could not be prouder.


Sarah
Merrell

Vice President, Client Services & Social Media

Sarah brings more than a decade of experience in marketing and business to her role. She began her career as a financial analyst before transitioning into marketing management. 

Sarah is a graduate of Leadership Blount. In 2017, she was a finalist for Outstanding Young Professional of the Year through the Young Professionals of Knoxville and was named one of Asheville’s 40 Under 40 Young Professionals in 2012 by the Biltmore Beacon. In 2019 Sarah was named to Knoxville’s 40 Under 40 presented by the Knoxville News Sentinel.

She holds an MBA degree from Western Carolina University, a B.A. in Communication Studies from UNC Chapel Hill, a Hubspot Inbound Marketing certification and is a Certified Tourism Ambassador.

Sarah has served as a member of the board of directors for organizations, including the American Advertising Federation, the Western Carolina University MBA Advisory Board and the  Zoo Knoxville Leadership Council. She has also mentored high school students through tnAchieves. Sarah received Goodwill’s Special Recognition Award in 2018 for her direction of their annual fundraiser for a number of years. She is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, serving as the V Awards Chair in 2017.

When not working or volunteering her time, Sarah can be found chasing around her toddler, or chasing her husband on two wheels, motorcycling through the mountain roads of North Carolina and Tennessee.


Allison
Lester

Director, Media Relations

Allison Lester is a dynamic leader and communications specialist with 14 years of experience in newsrooms across the country. An award-winning journalist and newsroom manager, Allison has an intimate understanding of the inner-workings of newsrooms and a knack at communicating with writers.

She is the recipient of multiple media awards including national and regional Edward R. Murrow awards, two Emmy Awards, an Associated Press award and recognition from the Georgia Association of Broadcasters.

She joined the Fletcher team in 2021 and has since led the firm’s media relations efforts with a proven track record of reaching millions across multiple platforms. Among her strengths are  planning and executing mutliple media tours, organizing and overseeing video shoots and earning our clients media coverage in major news outlets from Southern Living to Forbes.

Allison is a graduate of Auburn University with a B.A. in Communication and Psychology. She is passionate about the East Tennessee community and has devoted time to the school system with Leaders for Readers, and was awarded Knoxville Young Professional of the Year in 2017 for community service.

Allison spends her off time at the little league baseball field, bouncing her new baby boy and cheering on the Auburn Tigers.


Lynne
Andrews

Senior Healthcare Strategist

With more than 32 years of professional marketing and PR experience, Lynne Andrews is a top-producing luxury agent serving buyers and sellers along the beaches of the Emerald Coast. She is consistently one of the top agents on 30A by sales and transaction volume, in the top 1% of Corcoran agents nationwide, and ranked in the elite group of the top agents in the country by RealTrends and The Wall Street Journal.

Following a successful career as founder of Atlanta-based marketing public relations firm, Lynne brought her love of investment properties and real estate, joining the luxury powerhouse brokerage of Corcoran Reverie in 2020. Using her deep roots in marketing and expertise in buying and selling investment properties, Lynne Andrews offers a concierge level of service for every one of her clients, helping them achieve and exceed their real estate investment goals. As a seasoned luxury realtor, she prides herself on going above and beyond the sale for buyers and sellers, staying connected with her clients long after their property closes. As a top real estate producer on 30A and the Emerald Coast, she has personally achieved over $110M in sales since 2020.

  • Lynne Andrews & Co, Top Producing Luxury Realtor serving buyers and sellers along Emerald Coast, including 30A, Destin, Mexico Beach, Panama City Beach, Inlet Beach
  • 35+ years marketing and public relations experience as head of award-winning Atlanta-based PR firm, Marketing Expectations, Inc.
  • Individual sales of $110+MM Closed Volume (2019-2023)
  • Top Producing Individual Agent, Corcoran Reverie, 2022
  • Top Sold Listings by Volume Individual, 2022
  • Top Individual by Transactions Sides, 2021, 2022
  • Ranked #322 individual agent in FL by Tom Ferry Real Estate Trends for State of Florida (2023)
  • Top 1% of real estate professionals in Northwest Florida
  • Short-term property investor on 30A since 2004
  • Experienced real estate advisor guiding clients for primary or secondary homes, short or long-term investment properties, 1031 tax-deferred exchanges, cost segregation studies as a tax strategy in the Panhandle of FL.

Ashley
Seale

Strategic Communications Manager

Ashley Seale is a Senior Account Executive for Fletcher Marketing PR. Ashley joined the Fletcher team in 2022 after working in journalism for nearly six years.

Her love of storytelling developed while she was in college at Elon University. She traveled to Iowa to preview the Iowa caucuses in 2016 for the campus’s news station, Elon Local News. Ashley also earned the opportunity to intern with NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt in New York. 

While pursuing her journalism career in Southwest Georgia and East Tennessee she won regional awards for her storytelling skills as a multimedia journalist. Her abundant experiences range from covering breaking news and court to education, severe weather and city and county government. 

During her time with Fletcher, she has worked with a plethora of clients helping to increase brand awareness. Having worked on the other side as a local TV news journalist, Ashley is well-versed at communicating with journalists from various publications. Ashley has earned her Hubspot Inbound Marketing Certification and Meta Digital Marketing Associate Certification. She completed her first year at Southeast Tourism Society Marketing College.