Focus

Project management; ecommerce; crowdfunding, launch marketing, growth marketing; communications, copywriting; brand strategy, brand guidelines, data visualization brand guidelines; website design, graphic design, template creation; video editing; stakeholder and community engagement, collective impact; fund development, grants research and grantwriting; event production and management

Tools

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign; Canva, Adobe Express, Figma; CapCut, TikTok; Tableau, DataWrapper, Databox; NationBuilder; Green Light, Raiser’s Edge; Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign; Squarespace, Wordpress, Yep.so; Kickstarter, Indiegogo; Asana, ClickUp, Trello; Zapier, IFTTT

Sweet spot

I specialize in projects requiring expertise across disciplines. My broad-ranging skillset results in cost savings for the client.

Project management

There are areas where another freelancer’s skills will better serve the work. As a project manager, I bring together the appropriate resources and partners to serve each project—saving money, adding expertise and ensuring the project draws on the range of brilliance and skill present in our community. Team members receive training and mentorship with attention to methods of work that promote each person’s quality of life.

PREPARED FOR A GLOBAL PLATFORM

The new website could not have come at a better time.

The project began the year before the pandemic. In May 2020, the community was rocked by police murder, the community’s grief, and the uprising that followed. This came with a groundswell of awareness and support for Minneapolis’ Black residents and victims of human rights violations.

The events that followed were close to home: Mr Floyd had ties in North Minneapolis and it is likely he had engaged with Al Maa’uun at an earlier point.

Al Maa’uun had already pivoted to offer expanded services during the pandemic. Because of their leadership, years of impact and close community ties, awareness of Al Maa’uun increased dramatically after May 2020. They were highlighted by national voices as a place for people across the world to direct their donations.

Al Maa’uun goes viral

It may have been divine timing. The presence of a professional, comprehensive website, social media and content about the team contributed to the organization’s credibility with people seeking ways to have a tangible impact.

A large fundraiser was created by supporters on LaunchGood, a global fundraising site. It linked to the new Al Maa’uun website for background information. The website, in turn, was updated to send potential supporters to the fundraiser as it went viral.

We created graphics to match the fundraiser and ensure visitors could verify the organization they were looking into. The fundraising page raised more than $400,000.

The organization’s new Instagram account facilitated new community connections. Al Maa’uun was added to a list of recommended organizations, which also went viral.

The newly minted fundraising funnel, brand and website very likely contributed to increased trust, visibility and funds raised during this critical season.

coaching, product design, Brand design, Marketing plan, social media, website design, graphic design, printing

BRIEF

An entrepreneur in rural Minnesota required marketing and brand materials, as well as business coaching. Funded by a regional philanthropy, the work needed to meet the requirements of the funding partner as well. I joined as a business coach for this funder’s program to promote inclusive entrepreneurship and minority-owned business growth in southern Minnesota.

The client ran a successful, early-stage business with satisfied customers. She had a clear vision for the company. However, she did not have marketing or digital experience. The company did not have web-ready photos, print materials or digital infrastructure.

Previous engagements had taken place purely in English, which presented a communication barrier. This project required close attention to resources.

RESULT

Our biggest challenge was getting our name known to other businesses. The Fairbault Diversity Coalition got us in touch with our coach, Ruth. She made us flyers, business cards, slogans, a Facebook page. I would recommend the [coaching] program to people who are just starting their businesses. Now that we've worked with the program, we see ourselves maybe in 20 years as a statewide cleaning service. - Daughter of Luz Cleaning Service CEO

I worked with the client and her family to create the very first set of marketing and brand materials for her business. We collaborated in Spanish. The results were showcased in a video.

Project management: I worked with representatives of the two stakeholder entities—funder and company—to satisfy requirements, identify value-add opportunities and maintain clear communication. As coaches, we also joined periodic calls to connect and share strategies.

Product/service design: Starting from business consulting materials provided by a business incubator, the client and I worked to articulate the core product offerings, differentiators and value propositions. These served as the basis for the website’s navigation, content and calls to action.

Brand design: I designed brand messaging, logo, visuals and a brand guide, following the client’s priorities and research into the regional cleaning industry. We worked collaboratively, with the client indicating the direction and then choosing among options I presented.

The brand uses green to show its focus on ecofriendly cleaning, its key differentiator in the region. Three sparkles show a dual story of “sparkling clean” and the CEO’s name, which means “light.” The main font (“LUZ”) combines approachability with confidence. It will also be very legible when seen on the client’s car from a distance.

Bilingual services: The brand guide included Spanish translation. I also built out an Asana project in Spanish and created video screenshare tutorials in Spanish. These covered social media, the website, Asana and an accounting platform.

Print materials: I designed, purchased, packaged and delivered stickers, a car magnet, a promotional handout, business cards and promo “coupon” cards. This included one or two assets based on templates as examples for the client to work from, with the rest

User-friendly: Recognizing the importance of the client’s ability to continue to produce content after our work together, I created easily-duplicable print orders and a Canva account to make it easy to create designs for social media. These could be used by future contractors to build on our work.

Web design and copywriting: I created a Wordpress website and accompanying training materials. The copy included SEO friendly language. The website furthered a core organizing principle we had identified for the service, splitting the audience into home-owners and businesses.

Business consulting: In line with best practices advised by stakeholders, I transitioned the company to an accounting app and helped resolve communication issues with a local financial services provider. I also created a plan for how the company could advertise via directories, start running ads, and hire a salesperson. I worked to create the company’s Google My Business profile.

Graphic design: I sourced stock photography and edited the photos to fit the brand color palette. I also created a large repository of custom, branded social media templates in Canva. I sourced and edited vector illustrations to represent the founder and her family in brand imagery—an important part of the brand’s story as a family-owned business.

Graphic Design, Social media management, brand design

BRIEF

This young professionals network built an excellent regional reputation over the course of many years. Offering one of the only completely free professional development options for emerging leaders in the social sector, YNPN-TC offered fresh, industry-leading events; a widely-read blog; and an inclusive membership community. However, its brand identity had not been updated in many years. The frequent turnover of dispersed, early career volunteer leadership made it hard to bring a consistent visual language to all of its communications channels. This challenge would also come into play in aligning all the channels with the new brand guide. More immediately, it meant the work needed to be completed within the year of my volunteer service in this area.

RESULT

This brand guide is amazing. -Board member

The organization successfully updated to the new brand.

Research: Engaging as a member and then board member for many years, I had immediate experience to understand the needs of membership and brand ambassadors. I compiled use cases, consulted with board members and drew on data from the annual member survey to create requirements for the brand. Experiences with other regional networks and the national YNPN brand provided additional context and insight.

Fresh start: I refreshed the YNPN-TC brand and social media accounts, including graphic design and management of the brand implementation across channels. The primary brand color was lifted up from the existing palette, and brightened to work well alongside other brands in the region’s membership and events space at the time.

History and flexibility: The guide offered the reasoning behind design decisions. This helped current and future committee leaders make decisions about use cases not covered explicitly in the guide. Knowing people would definitely “break the rules,” the rules were made intentionally flexible so people could break them with the higher-level story of the brand in mind. In line with the ethos of the organization (and the lack of a staff role to manage brand adherence) the guide encouraged users to be empowered to make the decision they felt was right in a given circumstance.

Use-optimized brand guide: The brand guide spoke to the specific use cases of the organization and kept to under 7 pages. The format was “browse and glance” friendly in recognition of the way most volunteers were likely to use it. Even so, it was the most comprehensive guide in the organization’s history.

Backward compatibility: The logo’s shape stayed the same and the color palette drew closely on the previous palette. This allowed for a longer, staggered transition as different arms of this decentralized organization updated their materials at different times. It also prevented the process from stalling out, given there were many viewpoints about how the brand should look.

Templates: I created templates for Word, PowerPoint and Google Drive (Google Slides and Google Docs). Template uses during the first year included events, training materials, recruitment and data presentations.

Graphics: I created brand-aligned graphics for social media channels, emails and the website (see Instagram grid). We added the main brand assets to the Adobe Express app to make it easy for volunteers to create new graphics.

Training and documentation: As the Communications Chair, I managed a volunteer team to create channel-specific social media guides. These incorporated the brand identity and research on best practices. The process of creating them provided a professional development and portfolio-building opportunity to volunteers, while creating expertise among the volunteer base.

I also trained board members and volunteers on the brand identity and how to be a brand ambassador.

template design, graphic design, contextualization

These three sets of templates provide a happy medium between speed and customizability. The description below covers the “Active Auction” graphics, which were part of a larger project.

BRIEF

Small businesses move fast. And auctions move even faster. I created Instagram Story templates for this collectible artwork client with speed and professionalism as top priorities. The final graphics express the creativity and vintage vibe of the brand, while accommodating the client’s budget and abilities. A couple of them are shown here.

RESULT

Speed: Drawing on the client’s owned art pieces as backgrounds saved time in the creation stage. When ready to post, the client could upload the graphics in the same way they did with product photography. This respected an essential piece of context: they didn’t have graphic design capacity in-house and planned to post to social media themselves while running the rest of the business.

Professionalism: Consistency was the main channel for professional polish. Each template included a space for placing text, tags and animation directly from the Instagram or Facebook platform. This allowed for an exact match with the text and animation of other Stories shared for the same topic. For example, an auction series would include the title slide (“Active Auctions”) followed by photos of the auction items and screenshots of the auction pages, all with the same Instagram-native font.

Cost savings, branded graphics, interactivity

BRIEF

Sometimes you need the sweet spot between custom graphic design and something created by a non-designer. When cost-conscious initiatives can adapt existing visuals to their needs, they unlock time savings while retaining a distinct identity. They also retain autonomy through editability and re-use options.

I would much rather a client have template-based materials that keep them within financial and skill capacity, than overstretch and end up not being able to use anything we created together. However, this has to be done the right way.

RESULT

Goals achieved: These fillable voting templates combined Adobe Express assets, organizational branding, and research-backed methods to create a cohesive campaign. The time to create these was reduced significantly thanks to the Adobe starting point — serving one of the very top priorities for this volunteer-run initiative.

Audience reach: The Instagram Story series encouraged young adults in the Twin Cities to make a plan to vote, reaching members of one of the region’s largest professional networks for young adults.

See additional Instagram Story design and interactivity in the Story Highlights for the YNPN-TC Instagram (see the Highlights with titles in all caps).