The studio
Twenty years in healthcare taught us how trust is really built.
UPWARD was founded in 2020, but the education started two decades earlier: years spent inside hospitals and healthcare companies, learning how serious people make serious decisions. The studio exists because that lesson generalizes: trust is designed, not declared. We design it for firms whose work deserves it.
UPWARD, legally The Upward Spiral Group, is a deliberately small studio in Boulder, Colorado, founded in 2020 and led by Cody Strate, who spent twenty years inside acute healthcare first. It has delivered more than 100 projects for over 50 clients, and takes a handful at a time on purpose.
The story
The lesson that became a studio.
Before UPWARD, our founder spent twenty years in acute healthcare, much of it helping hospitals adopt technology they were afraid of. That work is a masterclass in trust: rooms full of skeptical clinicians and careful executives, decisions with real stakes, and no tolerance for salesmanship. What survived that education was a conviction about how people actually decide.
UPWARD applies that conviction to the firms we admire most: lawyers whose names are passed hand to hand, physicians whose patients drive past three competitors to see them, builders whose work outlives the signage. Businesses that win on reputation, and deserve a digital presence that works as hard as the reputation does.
We stayed deliberately small: a studio, not an agency floor. Strategy and story, design, photography, and film under one roof, and a client list short enough that everything gets real care. Our first client is still with us, which is the statistic we are proudest of.
The people
The team that does your work.
Cody Strate
Founder · Managing Director20+ years of CMO experience, a Forbes contributor, and a student of how real humans decide. Also a professional sports and motorsport photographer when the weekend allows.
Holly Strate
Design & Client SuccessForensic architecture for construction litigation, then Environmental Design at CU. The analytical eye behind our visuals, and the person clients thank by name.
Brenden Williams
Media Creation & Visual StorytellingPhotographer and filmmaker: the one who makes your people look like the professionals they are.
Sophie Williams
Graphic Design · Brand · SocialDesign systems and the social presence that keeps a brand consistent everywhere it appears.
How we behave
Values we can prove.
- 01
Small on purpose
A short client list is the quality strategy. You work with the people you met, and the work gets the attention your reputation deserves.
- 02
You own everything
Site, words, photographs, accounts. The vendor-hostage model disgusts us; several clients came to us to escape it.
- 03
The truth, beautifully
Real people, real places, real results. No stock lawyers, no invented numbers, no claims we can't back on a phone call.
- 04
The No Asshole Policy
It's a real, published policy. Life is too short and the work is too intimate to spend either on jerks, in either direction.
Boulder, Colorado · we come to you
Every client on this site is referenceable. Ask us for a phone number and call them.
See the work firstThe ask
You've met the studio. Let's meet your story.
A conversation
One real conversation with the people who would actually do the work. No funnel, no pitch deck, no account manager.
We promise you will leave a touch smarter than you arrived.