ABOUT ANJA WINIKKA

Based out of New York City, Anja Winikka has nearly two decades of digital marketing, content, PR, and partnerships experience. She currently works with a select few brands and businesses within the weddings & events industry helping to elevate and transform her clients’ brands with a measurable ROI.

Anja has a proven track record for branding and growing both consumer and B2B audiences within the weddings and events industry. She is best known for her two-sided knowledge of the industry and for triangulating industry audience segments with the right brand message and PR and content strategy– which has helped numerous brands and businesses 10X their reach organically and secure press in Harper’s Bazaar, BRIDES, The Knot, Martha Stewart Weddings, and more. 

Anja is the former founder of Maroo, a Y Combinator-backed a payments platform designed for the weddings & events industry. Within one year of launching the payments platform, Anja had onboarded over 7,000 small wedding businesses from coast to coast.

Prior to founding Maroo, Anja was a consultant, working 1:1 with small and medium-sized businesses on helping them to market and grow their businesses. Previously, Anja spent 13 years at The Knot. She was the editor of TheKnot.com from 2006-2016, where she mastered the art of acquiring 10s of 1000s of newly engaged couples year over year and worked closely with major bridal fashion, beauty and registry brands. During that time, she led an editorial team and grew the site from 7 million to 11.8 million monthly unique visitors. The Knot Instagram grew to over 1 million followers as well and in 2015 was recognized by Digiday as Best Brand on Instagram. 

In 2016, Anja shifted her focus to working with the approximately 500,000 small local businesses that power the weddings industry. She launched a series of social media and marketing workshops across 12 cities (from New York to Chicago, LA, and beyond) designed to help wedding businesses elevate their brands and reach more of the clients right for them. The workshops sold out to crowds across the country and became a model for dozens of other wedding industry workshops and summits thereafter. In 2019 AdWeek named Anja “The Knot’s Chief Innovator” for her work bringing digital marketing and social media insights a social savvy audience. 

Anja has been a go-to trusted expert in the media with appearances in Today Show, CBS Early Show, Fox Business News, VH1 Morning Buzz, CNN, E!, Access Hollywood, Katie, Meredith Vieira, and Anderson Cooper and more. See Anja’s press appearances here.