Community Impact
CSR Strategy • Business Objective Alignment • Communications Strategy • Message Development • Brand Marketing • Creative Strategy • Go-To-Market Planning • Audience Engagement
Having a positive impact matters to your customers, employees, and communities. Here are some of the brands I’ve helped to tell their community story.
01
Lyft
The Challenge: Lyft had a strong cultural ethos of doing the right thing, but the relatively young start-up was early in it’s community impact journey and lacked a formal localized approach.
The Solution: As the regional head of marketing, I understood Lyft’s company values was a differentiator for the brand overall. I prioritized community relations and social impact to be on par with traditional business drivers. Through philanthropic partnerships with service providers like Mary’s Place, for whom transportation was a significant barrier, we were able to solve real-world problems for the community, and authentically highlighted the company’s values at the same time. The outcomes from this approach contributed to the formation of what is now the company’s global CSR platform, “LyftUp.”
02
Starbucks
The Challenge: As a homegrown Seattle brand, Starbucks needed to engage Seattleites with the good work it was doing locally and nationally.
The Solution: As the head of community partnerships for Starbucks, I championed an innovative strategy that brought together communications, public policy, and philanthropy in a seamlessly integrated approach. Working hand-in-hand, we forged deep relationships in the local community and leveraged Starbucks physical stores, digital channels, events and third-parties for storytelling. Through signature benefit events like Hot Java Cool Jazz and Little Big Show, and hands-on support for philanthropic initiatives like No Child Sleeps Outside with Mary’s Place and the Community Resource Exchange with United Way, Starbucks impacted thousands of local lives and raised awareness for the brand and its partners in the process. In addition to leading the local team, I also helped bring national initiatives including the 100k Opportunities Coalition for underserved young people, Global Month of Service, and Upstanders to life.
03
Amazon in the Community
The Challenge: Amazon was making a positive impact in communities around the world but needed a strategy to communicate about its good work.
The Solution: As the first-ever head of marketing and communication for Amazon in the Community, I successfully engaged internal and external audiences with initiatives like Amazon Future Engineer, the Housing Equity Fund and Disaster Relief by Amazon. I created the first brand strategy for Amazon in the Community’s social impact priorities and programs, and developed outreach campaigns that measurably raised awareness of Amazon’s community priorities. Critically, we created a measurement schematic for social impact engagement efforts and developed clear goals and KPIs for communications in order to measure and track progress, generating buy-in from a diverse set of cross-functional stakeholders along the way.
