A snapshot of my recent projects.
Website redesign for Oregon’s largest homeless services provider
User research, messaging strategy, story design
Central City Concern (CCC) needed a website that could serve dramatically different audiences: people experiencing homelessness seeking immediate help, and funders and volunteers trying to understand the organization’s work. The existing site wasn’t working for anyone. I led the strategy to center the website around CCC’s wraparound services approach, recognizing that if someone under extreme stress could find what they needed, other audiences would naturally follow. Through one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and user testing, I identified key messages and designed user journeys around a simple call-to-action: “Get help now.” I prioritized enhanced accessibility and intuitive navigation to ensure people could access services regardless of their location, language, or device.
Impact
Phone calls from people confused about accessing services dropped sharply, while donations and volunteer enrollment increased. 85.5% of visitors could find help within just a few clicks, every key quality metric improved by at least 28%, and session duration and pages per session doubled as people easily navigated to housing, healthcare, success stories, and volunteer opportunities.
Scaling a national social change movement
Digital strategy and automated member recruitment
The Full Frame Initiative (FFI) had ambitious goals to grow a national movement but lacked the staff capacity to scale. They’d built a small community of activists and leaders through direct outreach, but recruitment was a bottleneck limiting growth. I overhauled messaging, developed compelling member stories, and produced webinars and video content to reach new audiences. Then I built automated customer journeys using audience segmentation to tailor content based on subscriber interests, culminating in powerful calls to action to join the movement.
Impact
Previously, 100% of members came through staff-intensive direct outreach. Afterward, 60% of new members were acquired through digital marketing channels and converted through automation. This freed FFI’s small team to focus on activating members in social change work while the movement grew on its own.
Target audience engagement through thought leadership
Positioning and media relations
The Full Frame Initiative (FFI) developed a groundbreaking urban planning tool and wanted to implement it in cities nationwide, but they faced a challenge: their audience was primarily in human services, not urban planning or local government. In order to reach new audiences, I developed a thought leadership strategy that leveraged FFI’s existing connections and expertise to build credibility and name recognition among urban planners and government decision-makers. I paired FFI’s CEO with a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow to publish a series of articles in Planning Magazine making the case for new methods. Then I positioned FFI’s sole city planner as an emerging thought leader through strategic speaking engagements, podcast bookings, ghostwritten articles in national publications, and building her social media presence to engage with top thinkers in the field. I also pitched and secured her participation at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Impact
FFI presented at over 10 national and international urban planning conferences, spoke on more than 5 podcasts and webinars, and published 5 articles. Their target audience grew by 40% and the tool was implemented in multiple cities, generating local and national media coverage.
Youth advocacy for foster care reform
Media relations and strategic communications
Children First for Oregon sought to advance statewide child welfare reform by centering the voices of young people impacted by foster care, but foster care policy discussions were dominated by deficit-based narratives that overlooked youth expertise and lived experience. I developed comprehensive communications strategies that elevated youth voices and positioned them as leaders in policy conversations. I created messaging that centered their lived experiences and transformed how stakeholders talked about foster care – shifting from what’s wrong with young people to solutions-oriented conversations led by young people themselves. My media relations work involved researching, monitoring, and cultivating relationships with journalists, resulting in placements in local, statewide, and national outlets. During legislative sessions, I fielded daily calls from reporters and built a reputation as a reliable partner who could deliver compelling story angles and well-prepared spokespeople. I also secured media placements for government officials championing these reforms.
Impact
Young people successfully passed every piece of legislation they wrote and advocated for, their voices reached audiences across multiple media platforms, and the narrative around foster care policy fundamentally shifted to recognize youth as experts and solution-makers rather than problems to be solved.
Raising $500,000 through digital storytelling
Integrated campaign strategy and execution
When COVID-19 created a budget deficit at Central City Concern (CCC), the organization needed to quickly raise funds through a channel it had never relied on: small online donations. The initial goal was $100,000 in one year. I led the ideation, design, writing, production, and launch of an integrated digital storytelling campaign that activated first-time donors by showcasing how CCC’s teams were stepping up during an unprecedented time. The campaign included fundraising emails, digital advertising, audience segmentation, and digital narrative testing to mobilize supporters and substantiate the public’s perception of homelessness with real stories from the frontlines.
Impact
The campaign exceeded expectations, raising $500,000 in just eight months. I successfully activated a new base of first-time online donors and established a sustainable digital fundraising channel for the organization.
Growing national reach and deepening engagement
Multichannel activation campaign
The Full Frame Initiative (FFI) needed to expand its reach beyond its core audience while deepening engagement with existing supporters around its equity-focused framework. The challenge was making abstract concepts concrete and actionable in a way that would both educate and inspire people to take the next step with the organization. I designed and executed an 8-week multimedia campaign spanning web, email, and social media that guided participants through FFI’s framework with compelling, actionable content. My content strategy elevated real-life examples, videos, guiding questions, resources, and partner stories, with each weekly email building toward a culminating webinar showcasing partner work. Through strategic design, I created a journey that made complex equity concepts accessible and immediately applicable to participants’ own work and communities.
Impact
250 participants from 40 states engaged with the campaign (25% of whom were new to the organization), email engagement was exceptionally strong with a 60% open rate and 15% click rate, and the campaign concluded with FFI’s largest webinar ever, drawing 400 registrants (55% new to the organization). The campaign successfully introduced hundreds of new people to FFI’s work while strengthening relationships with existing supporters.