My Work
Kent School Is…
The prevailing sentiment at Kent was that it was still valuable to publish a viewbook and, in an increasingly competitive market, it was important to be more self-assured in our presentation.
Many boarding schools hire external firms to produce their viewbook at a significant expense. We had an excellent team at Kent, so we made this ourselves. I developed the concept and an outline, our photographer set to work collecting and capturing images, I wrote the copy, and our designer was encouraged to be bolder than we typically would be.
I believe the outcome is a world-class viewbook, produced at a fraction of the cost.
Drew School: Since 1908
Drew had an excellent talking heads video of students, teachers, and parents extrapolating upon the school’s brand language. What we were missing was an illustration of our values that would resonate with prospective students.
In a concept meeting, we stumbled upon the idea of Wes Anderson-inspired vignettes of four distinct student experiences.
In a proud moment, this video was shown on the first day of school to the students and they gave it a standing ovation.
Kindergarten at MP&MS
Responsible for marketing and enrollment at MP&MS, it became very clear, very quickly, that our biggest challenge was preschool families opting for the well-regarded local public school for kindergarten. I encountered a parent sentiment of “The public school is doing the same thing as MP&MS, and for free.”
We could not compete with the price, but the opportunity was ripe to illustrate to families that the public school was, in fact, not doing the same thing as MP&MS.
Across multiple conversations with faculty and academic leadership, I developed a framework to detail our curriculum and, just as importantly, emphasize that the curriculum was built upon a deep understanding of this developmental stage.
This piece succeeded in making the decision more nuanced for our preschool families.
Chandler School Man of Steel Trailer
At Chandler School, we were shifting to the less-exciting part of a capital campaign: building a parking structure.
But we had great resources. A past parent was releasing a major movie and offered a private, early screening for the Chadler community at a local movie theater. Our board chair was a noted voiceover artist who did not take himself too seriously. And I had an idea.
Tongue in cheek though it is, this short video shown in advance of the movie on the big screen injected real energy into our efforts. The parking lot was funded and built, and stands proudly today.
Experience Education
One of The Bush School’s strategic challenges was to amplify our “K-12ness.” The lower school, middle school, and upper school were full of virtues on their own, but there was a need to emphasize the connective tissue between the divisions.
This viewbook was created in-house; the designer and I developed the concept, I wrote the copy and took a few of the photos, while our photographer took the bulk of the photos.
I was pleased when, years later, Bush was hiring a new lower school director and they utilized the tagline and themes our small but mighty team created over the summer.
A Culture of Kindness
After 100+ years without a marketing communications department, there was a real opportunity to demonstrate the function's value to the entire, and somewhat skeptical, Kent School community.
We planned a two-pronged approach: a full redesign of our website complemented by an institutional video that would resonate with every constituency.
We quickly landed on kindness as our theme, as I heard over and over again that the welcoming nature of the community set Kent apart among New England boarding schools.
Keeping this project under wraps, and in some cases actively misleading people, was an interesting challenge, but the result was a huge success. Everyone who saw the video recognized Kent School in it, and appreciated that we had made it.
Kent Quarterly Magazine
Despite the frequency suggested by its name, Kent’s magazine was published twice a year. In lieu of a marketing communications department, the magazine was edited by a faculty member and often featured older white men on the cover.
Knowing that the magazine was sent to 8,000 constituents, we saw an opportunity to update the design, diversify the visuals, and pair explorations of Kent’s history with its future.
We used the newly created Kent Competencies as our framework and started with the competency that was first among equals: active empathy.
Once again, this was created entirely in-house by my team with only the cover illustration provided by a contracted artist.
Take the Plunge
We were cultivating a culture of joyful philanthropy at The Bush School, and our director of development came to colloquially say that more families needed to “take the plunge” and participate in the annual fund.
The idea was hatched to create a challenge. The school’s technology director had a background in film production and offered to film and edit a video if I wrote the script and managed the logistics.
Charmingly homespun, the result helped the school community see that fundraising did not have to be serious, behind-closed-doors business.
Chandler School Shamrock Magazine
Despite being a midsized K-8 school, we were fortunate at Chandler to have a graphic designer on staff. She got better with every project, so she and I started making the magazine ourselves.
I came up with the theme, wrote the articles, and took the pictures. Our alumni team were close partners, ensuring our storytelling addressed the school’s history. And the designer put it all together.
I’d probably make different design choices today, but more than a decade later, this piece holds up as being finely calibrated for its target audience.
A Letter to My Teacher
I found a strong operational and budget-friendly rhythm at Drew, where we would produce a high-quality video to precede the paddle raise portion of our live auction in the spring, then create a lightly revised version of the video to kick off our admissions open house events in the fall.
Finding stories that resonate with internal and external audiences is not always easy, but this concept was a big hit in both contexts. I started by asking a handful of students, “Who has been the most impactful teacher for you at Drew?” I ensured our teachers represented every academic department and that our students represented a wide range of experiences.
I asked the students to write a letter (gently edited by me), asked the teachers to come to the theater at a specific time for “a surprise that you are going to love,” and we rolled the cameras.
Raising Funds for the Kent School Chapel
Kent School was founded by an Episcopalian Monk, so the campus Chapel is of great significance to the school. It is also of historic significance, as its architect went on to design the Empire State Building.
For all of its community significance, the Chapel was not large enough to accommodate every student, and many of its mechanical systems were overdue for an update.
Renovating the Chapel was an enormously sensitive topic, but one that the head of school handled beautifully. He asked me for a piece he could take to a potential donor for the renovation, and we quickly aligned on what information it should include. He left the aesthetic and the execution up to me. I opted to tap into nostalgia and set up the head of school to talk about how faithful the project would be to the original design and intent of the Chapel.
The combination of the head of school’s stewardship and the support of this piece helped secure a seven-figure gift to support the Chapel’s renovation.
What is the Mission of The Bush School?
I arrived at Bush in the midst of a public scandal and a 15-month departmental vacancy. I heard early and often that people were hungry for consistent brand language. Being new to the area and to the school, and with the crisis and starting my department taking up most of my attention, instituting brand language was neither realistic nor advisable.
In a conversation with a colleague, we both lamented that people at the school seemed unfamiliar with Bush’s mission statement, which was admirably concise: to spark in students of diverse backgrounds and talents a passion for learning, accomplishment, and contribution to their communities.
Rather than lecture the faculty and staff about the importance of mission fluency as a starting point for brand language, I took a humorous approach. This video was screened during a faculty meeting and met with ample laughter and good cheer. And, the message resonated, too: people dedicated themselves to learning the mission so we could have common language.
Alumni Interview
Drew School had long battled a perception that it was not as “academically rigorous” as other high schools in San Francisco.
This is a nuanced topic that I have encountered in every school, including the notably rigorous ones.
We realized we were not going to change this perception by using only our institutional voice, so I began connecting with alumni attending selective colleges to gather their stories and testimony as a way to show our community that our program worked.
Val Wallace was just across the bridge at UC Berkeley, so I went over there, we set up in the library (possibly against the rules!), and I asked her a handful of questions. This is a low-pretense video on purpose.
At one point, Val naturally landed on one of the school’s talking points, almost verbatim, without any direction, which I took as a good sign that our messages were authentic.
Drew School College Counseling Handbook
Another strategy to calm community anxiety about Drew’s perceived “academic rigor” was to emphasize the effectiveness of the college counseling process.
The college counselors had been putting this material together in a simple Google Doc when I suggested we bring in a designer to turn it into a piece we could share with the whole community and prospective families.
We saw the number of families who hired private college counselors plummet, and the anxiety about outcomes calmed notably.
Kent School: A Culture of Connection
We had experienced such success with our Culture of Kindness video and were at a bit of a loss for how to follow it.
When we were thinking about what this video should accomplish, I was focused on how serious our communications were overall (and those of our peer schools). There was very real joy and humor to be found at Kent School, but it seems those traits never made it past the borders of campus.
So, we took a risk and made a video that was light and not self-serious. This turned out to be a bridge too far for some of our colleagues (an experience from which I learned a lot!), but it holds up and I stand by it.
MP&MS Admittance Video
I was connected with a local video producer who was home from college on break. Due to an unforeseen series of circumstances, we never actually met in person. The creative brief, shooting schedule, and overall desire for the video were all conveyed over email.
Short, sweet, and focused on connections, this video gave parents a sense of the enrivonment their child had just earned admission to.