What is your role at Hattaway?
As a Strategy Associate at Hattaway Communications, it is my job to switch back and forth between thinking about the larger questions, and the smaller questions. I get to think about big ideas for messaging campaigns, and then switch to the technical side of answering how we carry out those big ideas. I help facilitate conversations about the biggest challenges a national organization might face, and then think about the small nuances in telling that organization’s story.
What are you currently working on that you are really passionate about and why?
Growing up, I listened to The Moth Radio Hour, so without a doubt the project I am currently most excited about is the work I’m doing with The Moth. In this project, the Hattaway team is speaking with participants of the Moth Storytelling Workshop to learn how individuals have applied advocacy tools in their lives and storytelling. Aside from being an organization I admire, I am passionate about this project because it links storytelling and driving meaningful change through advocacy.
What is currently igniting your imagination?
Recently, the Fetterman Senate campaign has sparked my imagination. Fetterman’s digital team was able to drive narrative change using humor, coordinating across social platforms and capturing the attention of –and perhaps even helping drive– youth turnout in the midterm elections. Fetterman’s ‘memorable memeing moments’ truly defined his opponent, who couldn’t keep up with the cross-platform engagement. This campaign highlighted the power and potential of memes to disrupt and steer political messaging for progressive candidates.
What originally got you interested in communications?
In college, Donna Oglesby, the former US Information Agency Counselor, and the most amazing professor I ever had, assigned Ben O’Loughlin’s ‘Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order’. The book and course began to show me how nations can battle through strategic narratives on the global stage, and how national narratives can be manipulated through the internet and new media. These ideas went on to guide my undergraduate and Master’s Theses’.
What’s the career highlight you’re most proud of?
I wrote a joke that aired on Late Night TV nationally when I was 20.
