Who We Are

Courtney Dirks has background in commercial real estate, communications and sales. She is also passionate about creating handmade jewelry and helping fellow artisans build and grow their own businesses. After bouncing around the west coast for years, she settled in Seattle and has found great joy traveling, playing sports and interacting with the local creative community.

Ram Dutt is an engineer by profession who comes from a family of musicians and artists. He sees his own passion for music and art in his nine year old son, who has already inspired many with his art and has led Ram to foster creativity in many others. Ram and his family live in Seattle, which is full of life, energy and an enthusiastic creative community.

Jason Dirks is a business management consultant by day and a passionate outdoor photographer by night (or any other hour he can get outside and take pictures)! He and his wife live in beautiful Seattle, which provides the ideal landscape for his photographic interests: wildlife and nature, travel, sports and adventure.

How Meylah Came Together

Once upon a time, a group of creative individuals who, perhaps like you, hold down serious day jobs — decided it was time to create a new kind of creative community. Having found that it is hard to get your bearings in the online creative world, we imagined a place for like-minded people to share and advance creatively, while getting step-by-step directions to turn our passion into a business.

In talking about our own creative pursuits of painting, photography and handmade crafts, we found that we had faced similar challenges to building an online presence and marketing our work. Individually, we had come up with solutions that we all could use and by continuing to exchange information and connect with others in our local creative community in Seattle, we found that helping one another elevates the whole group. Whether you’re a painter, quilter, knitter, baker or candlestick-maker, you can benefit from sharing ideas, inspiration and experience.

Our Values

• Be Committed to Helping Each Other
• Live and Breathe Creativity
• Smile and Have Fun
• Show Passion in All That You Do
• Give Before You Take

• Together We Create a Great Experience
• Foster Dynamic Learning
• Be Humble and Honest
• Do More with Less
• Embrace Change