Her previous full-time positions included senior editor at a women's magazine, legal association marketing and communications director and the associate publisher of a custom publishing company's financial division.
In 2001, Brereton created the concept for and launched mary-kateandashley, the Olsen twins' tween lifestyle magazine, which had a circulation of 1 million.
In the past 20 years, Brereton has created marketing campaigns, ads, e-newsletters and other items for more than a half-dozen associations and worked on marketing and PR projects for companies including the Cartoon Network, McDonald's, Baker Tilly, McGladrey, Wolters Kluwer and Nielsen.
In addition to producing magazines for Northern Trust, KeyBank, Janus, American Music Group and other clients, Brereton has copy edited books, articles and other items for CBS, Johns Hopkins University, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Kaplan and MARS Wrigley.
Brereton, who has a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, has also written five nonfiction books; taught writing courses for Mediabistro.com and Columbia College—and has had articles published in magazines, newspapers and other publications ranging from the Chicago Tribune, Teenwire.com and Discovery to Green Building & Design, Wealth, Interest.com, Profile and Life & Style Weekly.