Business and Creative Strategy

Melding Marketing & Design at a National Education Organization

From a newly branded strategy to a comprehensive, multi-channel outreach infrastructure. 

Data Analytics // Content Development // Website Revamp

A stacked peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The bread layers are labeled data. The jelly layer is labeled content. The peanut butter layer is labeled website.

Colleague Recommendation

“What really sets her apart is how she pairs creativity with thoughtful planning and leadership. She doesn’t just think about the design–she thinks about how the team works, how the process flows, and how to build something that actually holds together.”

Caleb West, Creative Systems Leader (UX/UI), Former Classmate

Overview

The McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership, a center of excellence within a Chicago university system, had just gone through a branding strategy project when they hired me. The national nonprofit had a new look and sense of direction, but lacked the design and marketing expertise to put together and carry out an intentional, cross-departmental outreach plan.

Duration

2 years

Role

Marketing Manager & Director of Special Projects

Data Analytics

A major gap for the center’s outreach was a lack of connected communication tools. Registration for in-person events was handled in one platform. Online event registration was handled separately. Email subscribers could be entered manually from paper sign ups at events or imported from Excel spreadsheets pulled from the center’s CRM. Getting data into the center’s CRM was largely a manual process, which often led to duplicated entries. Additionally, the few marketing metrics that were tracked were kept separately in different departments. 

 

Despite being a creative, I dove into understanding APIs to better build the connections between our outreach tools. Then I collaborated with directors of other departments to start collecting better, clean data. Clean data synced among various outreach tools meant less staff time manually importing, editing, or entering data in our CRM and email tools. It also enabled us to more reliably segment our audiences and provide the content they opted into within the frequency they chose.

A loaf of bread on a cutting board with four pieces sliced
27K+

Audience Reach

27,000+ average recipients per national email campaign

47%

Segmentation Impact

47% peak open rate achieved through targeted messaging to niche registrant lists

461

Lead Generation

461 new email opt-ins generated from a single coordinated outreach effort

Jar of raspberry jam

Content Development

To fuel our first centerwide marketing plan, I transformed the organization’s outreach into a high-volume content engine. I led the end-to-end planning, editing, and publishing of weekly articles to support a multi-channel strategy across email, social, web, and print. This coordinated effort was instrumental in meeting grant-funded recruitment requirements and driving consecutive annual increases in national conference attendance and sponsorship values.

 

Recognizing a gap in approachable national policy discussions, I pioneered an audio-visual strategy to meet audience demand. I launched a quarterly video podcast series featuring national experts, managing everything from coordination to production and distribution. This experiment became a staple of our content mix, successfully publicizing our expertise and national conference across four seasons while amassing a significant digital following.

52

Production

52 articles published and distributed in one year

4

Lifespan

4 seasons of national policy video podcasts

12K+

Reach

12,413 YouTube views to date

Website Revamp

With the new data and content development systems in place, I led a full-scale website overhaul to reorganize and redesign a sprawling site that had grown to over 300 pages. Over time, individual departmental requests had created a tangled web of content that lacked a clear hierarchy or cohesive user experience. To find a way forward together, I facilitated interactive whiteboarding sessions with our directors, leaning into their individual strengths to ensure every voice was heard and our collective vision was unified.

 

The project goals were to clear the content bloat and modernize the design to amplify our branding. I conducted a thorough content audit to remove redundant and outdated material, using the documentation to show how a succinct, user-friendly layout would better serve our audience. By integrating our newly connected outreach tools, we also streamlined how we collected data, allowing us to deliver more personalized, dynamic content to our subscribers. The website redesign launched on time and within budget, earning glowing praise from leadership and partners for its newfound clarity, ease of use, and drastically improved design.

Jar of peanut butter
70%

Efficiency

70% reduction in site size through content auditing

8

Collaboration

8 departmental directors unified through interactive strategy

100%

Reliability

100% on-time and on-budget project completion