Global Development
As Director of Public Relations, I worked with a global team of communicators promoting Heifer International’s mission in 26 countries to end poverty with sustainable agriculture, economic development and entrepreneurship.
Career Transition
After working at the University of Michigan for six years, I was looking for a new challenge and jumped at an opportunity to work for Heifer International. The organization was led by visionary change leader Pierre Ferrari, a former Coca-Cola executive who was taking the 70-year-old organization in an exciting new direction. Pierre was enthusiastic about strategic communications and was looking for someone who could tell Heifer’s story to a global audience.
Background
Heifer is a successful charity with a loyal following within a large segment of the American public, which donates about US$70 million a year. Heifer’s new strategy was to diversify its revenue sources, seeking more funding from institutional and corporate donors, such as the United Nations, USAID and the Gates Foundation.
Challenge
Rebrand and reposition Heifer as a serious global development organization that does impactful large-scale projects worthy of funding by institutional donors, corporations and philanthropists.
Visiting Heifer project sites in Uganda.
Strategic Comms & Marketing Tactics
I created content and pitched stories to top-tier media outlets, such as The New York Times. These were publications that were closely read by our target audience, including CEOs, institutional donors, philanthropists, government officials and potential NGO partners. The media mentions raised Heifer’s visibility and served as invaluable material for presentations to donors. A special focus of the campaign was getting thought leadership content placed in Devex – a website that is widely read by the global development community.
NGO - Global Development Key Achievements
Newsjacking
Devex Media Placements
Newsjacking
Heifer needed to have a more prominent voice in the conversations about major stories affecting countries the organization works in. I used “newsjacking” tactics to raise Heifer’s profile and show it’s engaged with the key issues impacting farmers.
The best example of this happened during my first three months with Heifer in 2016, when Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti – a country where the organization has a strong presence. I was able to get five placements in The New York Times. That was more than Heifer had in the past five years.
Most important: The Times stories included links to Heifer’s website, leading to a significant uptick in traffic.
Heifer was also mentioned in stories by AP, Reuters, AFP and other media outlets.
I received the “Employee Impact Award” for the Hurricane Matthew campaign that earned 1,553 placements in 30+ countries, with an ad equivalency of $1.2 million. It continues to be Heifer's most successful media outreach campaign.
“We’re very worried about the country’s future in terms of food security,” said Hervil Cherubin, country director in Haiti for Heifer International, a nonprofit that works with more than 6,500 farming families in the south. “Most of the crops are gone. Many of the farm fields are like landfills. They’re full of trash, seawater, gravel and other debris.”
Devex Media Placements
Devex is a must-read site for the movers and shakers in the global development world. Heifer had long struggled to get noticed by Devex. I cultivated relationships with the writers and editors. I also developed and executed a campaign that successfully placed a series of interviews, profiles, thought leader quotes and feature stories on the site. I sponsored a trip to Africa with one of the writers and traveled with her to assist with the story.
