Your work. Your ideas.
Your experiences. Your life.
Your stories. Your voice. 

While they may have many things in common with traditional businesses, nonprofits and NGOs truly are a different breed. They operate differently, they base their decisions on different motivations and values, they rely heavily on personal connections, volunteers, and less certain income streams. Storytelling takes on a different role in this world: It needs to inspire, educate, and ultimately create advocates for the work. I've spent years dedicated to understanding the nuances of storytelling in the nonprofit arena.

It’s not enough to just write a great book. You need to ensure you’re targeting the right audience, cultivating your online presence, and have the right publishing and marketing plan in place. My partnership extends beyond just words on a page. As a seasoned marketing professional, I can also collaborate with your teams to help plan the best approach to bringing your book to market. 

Many organizations see books and memoirs as an ideal means of marking significant milestones and anniversaries. And they are—but a book is typically only one piece of celebrating a milestone. How does it connect to the other efforts that are happening as part of the celebration? It’s critical to understand the role you want your book to play in the big picture.

Why limit your story to a single medium? With decades of storytelling experience in written, video, graphic, and oral history formats, I can advise on how to maximize audience engagement by sharing your story (or strategic parts of it) in different mediums. 

Some writers view working with multiple stakeholders as a burden or hindrance to completing a project. But my entire career has been spent collaborating across marketing, legal, account, client, and executive teams to create great content. I see multiple stakeholders as an opportunity to tell a better story—and that’s why I include them in conversations (like StoryArc sessions) right from the start! 

With a master’s degree in library science specializing in archives and special collections, I love using primary research to surface the one-of-a-kind insights and details that bring a story to life in personal and compelling ways. Give me a stack of boxes filled with old notebooks and randomly saved papers, or access to that storage closet that’s collected God-knows-what over the years, and I’m like a kid diving for a quarter at the bottom of a pool. 

Community transformation isn’t just a buzz word for me, or something I participate in when my day job announces a community service day: it’s a lifelong passion. I’ve been involved in efforts both locally and abroad for decades. Here’s where I’m currently serving: 

• Writing coach for The Exchange, a pilot project and collaboration between Deloitte and a consortium of Black-owned newspaper publishers, designed to co-create and distribute business content tailored for diverse audiences

• Local peace-making and racial reconciliation efforts in South bend, IN in partnership with the Telos Group, whose mission is to form communities of American peacemakers across lines of difference, and equip them to help reconcile seemingly intractable conflicts at home and abroad

• Working with mentally and physically-challenged children at a therapeutic horseback riding center to help them grow cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally (and working towards national certification as a therapeutic riding instructor)