My Work

I work on communications that are difficult to get right.

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My work spans integrated campaign strategy, brand development, media relations, fundraising and stewardship communications, and content production across digital and print — most of it in healthcare and nonprofit settings, including three years leading communications at an HIV/AIDS care centre in Vancouver. I develop content strategies and run social campaigns, and I use analytics — Google Analytics among them — to understand what is actually working rather than what looks like it should. I manage multiple priorities and competing timelines, which in practice means knowing which deadlines are real and which are negotiable.

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I came to communications from visual arts — a degree in visual communications, then a postgraduate diploma in contemporary crafts in the United Kingdom — and it shapes how I work. I have a considered view on typography, composition, and how an image is used, and I would rather build something than brief it out. In the rebrands I have led, the measure of success was never the guidelines document. It was whether teams adopted the templates, because guidelines without usable tools get quietly abandoned and consistency erodes within a year.

I have worked both sides of the client relationship. Agency-side in India, I wrote the pitches and scoped the engagements. In-house since, I have been the client evaluating them. Understanding how agencies price and position their work makes me a more effective partner in either direction. The same principle applies internally: reviewing sensitive material with clinical teams before it went out earned a trust that changed how the work came to me, with care staff bringing stories forward rather than waiting to be asked.

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The organizations I return to are in healthcare and the nonprofit sector. Not for the budgets, but for the standard they hold you to. Writing for donors about clinical care, addiction, and housing means the honest account and the fundable one can pull in different directions — the instinct is to lead with the hardest detail because it moves people, but a donor should finish a piece understanding the need without a participant feeling exposed by it. I learned to lead with what the care makes possible rather than what the illness takes away. People give money they were never obliged to give, and they recognize immediately when a message rings hollow. That is a demanding discipline, and it has made me better at the parts of this work that matter most.