STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

During my time with Google, YouTube, and KIPP, I confronted complex communications challenges. These experiences trained me to quickly synthesize what organizations are trying to accomplish and provide recommendations about the best channels and messaging to reach their communication goals.

Some clients look to me to supplement a high level communications skill-set while they search for a full-time staff member. Others have staff in place, but are seeking communications support or coaching to help them decide what to do. I work well in either case and always keep an eye to the longer-term vision.

RECENT PROJECTS

George B. Storer Foundation and Pisces Foundation

Within today’s child care and early childhood education field, communities are pushing for more (at times, universal) access; families, administrators, and lawmakers are demanding “quality;” and the workforce is under-compensated, leading to high turnover and staffing shortages. “Nature-based learning” has shown positive early results for child development, so the Storer Foundation wanted to find out whether there was a unifying message that could get more early learning funders interested in outdoor learning for very young kids.

Alongside Seven November, we completed a study designed to understand the early learning funding communities’ priorities, values, and vocabulary to inform resonate messaging that brings more partners into advancing the work of outdoor learning. The intention was to provide the Storer and Pisces communities the strategic communications platform for attracting new partnerships, investments and program scale. We shared our findings via a webinar with the Natural Start Alliance and National Wildlife Federation's Early Childhood Health Outdoors (ECHO).

The University of Washington

The Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) is a collaboration between Microsoft, UW, and Tsinghua University in China. They were looking for recruitment strategies for their Masters in Tech Innovation degree. In collaboration with Seven November, we conducted an audit of their admissions data, messaging, interviewed current students, staff, and alumni, and then delivered recommendations on communication strategies to best reach and influence prospective students.

For UW’s College of the Built Environment (CBE), we completed a strategic communications planning initiative to best frame CBE’s role, approach, and vision in a way that brings new partnerships, investments, and supporters to the college. By analyzing the partner and funder audience’s perceptions of the college, resonant language, most influential messengers and communications preferences, we are able to design a path forward to connecting more potential partners to engage with CBE.

College Track at The Durant Center

Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors made a $10M investment to open a new College Track center in his hometown of Prince George’s County, MD. I was proud to project manage the launch event and ensure that the goals of the partners (The Kevin Durant Charity Foundation, College Track, and Prince George’s County Public Schools) were met. An NBA-style draft ceremony inducted students into College Track with personalized jerseys and our team placed a Washington Post article, featuring Kevin’s legacy in his hometown.

Blue Shield of California Foundation

Blue Shield of California’s mission is to end domestic violence and improve systems of safety for all Californians. I worked with the BSCF team to launch a digital strategy campaign called “End the Silence” that reached over 1M people and garnered engagement from over 4,000. The strategy included a social media editorial calendar, campaign messaging, design input, and measurement and analysis reporting.

Cabrillo College

Cabrillo wanted to grow student enrollment in an age of declining state funding for community colleges. I worked with Cabrillo's Director of Marketing to complete an integrated marketing plan that shifted the college away from primarily print marketing into a more cost effective digital strategy. We defined our messaging to reach a diverse student body, examined media spending for ROI, and launched a mobile app, social media campaign, and new videos for Career Technical Education programs. 

Transgender Educator

The goal of this organization is to raise awareness of transgender discrimination and highlight the importance of transgender inclusiveness on college campuses. To make progress towards this goal, I set a strategy that would help the client reach college administrators. Through the deployment of brand new marketing assets (including a website, social media posts, business cards, posters, email campaign and infographics), the client has been asked to speak at statewide meetings on fairness in policies and practices as well as several campus groups.