Girls Rock! Indianapolis Facebook Fundraiser

Girls Rock! Indianapolis’ annual summer camp, like all events, looked differently this year. For the first time, the organization delivered its day camp entirely virtually. Rather than gearing up for an in-person concert, volunteers taught the kids how to produce songs digitally. While our total number of campers was smaller, post-camp survey results indicated the…

Website: Hirons.com

Over the course of the last several months, I have been heavily involved in the redevelopment of Hirons' website. This has included writing copy for web pages, editing the entire site's copy and providing feedback on user experience / navigation. Among the new features of the site, we made the decision to break out several…

LGBTQ Cultural Competency with Indy Pride, Inc.

As the leader of the firm's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, I had the pleasure of coordinating Hirons' recent LGBTQ cultural competency training with Chris Handberg, the executive director of Indy Pride, Inc. Part of the agency's DEI plan, distributed to all employees in October, was encouraging staff to share their pronouns on platform profiles…

No one benefits from uncertainty

Lessons learned in leadership from the COVID-19 pandemic The following post was written in collaboration with Deana Haworth, APR and was originally published here. I have always valued face-to-face communication, both in my personal life and in the myriad strategic communications campaigns I have led over the past two decades. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit,…

Your Two-Month Hiring Process is Elitist

We all know (I would hope) that the business world has a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Policies and practices for generations have been designed to favor white, wealthy men - especially as they pertain to candidate recruitment and hiring processes. There are lots of things about…

Hirons’ diversity, equity and inclusion policy

Hirons' Diversity Team was established years ago to help diverse staff feel included and to educate team members on various cultural learnings that can aid our work as communications professionals. The purpose of this affinity group has shifted and evolved over time as conversations surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace have become more…

Your webinar on diversity may not be as helpful as you think

The public murders of Black and brown individuals have added fuel to the previously meager but growing flame that was corporate diversity, equity and inclusion. More and more difficult conversations are being had in the workplace, and as an ally to POC, a woman, a member of the LGBTQ community — and just generally a…

Release: Local nonprofit retains summer music programming despite the pandemic forcing a change in format

INDIANAPOLIS – A recent survey from Girls Rock! Indianapolis shows that the majorityof families are still interested in the organization’s annual summer camp, despite itsmove to a virtual format. The organization hit their goal of 100 camp sign-ups shortly before social distancingprotocols were put in place. GRI surveyed families to gauge interest in alternativeformats and…

Trends to know: COVID-19’S effect on media consumption

The following blog post was originally published on hirons.com and written in collaboration with Sheila Smiley. Marketing and advertising budgets are typically the first to be slashed during an economic downturn. In 2020, the ad industry is bracing for a projected loss of $26 billion in revenue. However, cutting advertising and media budgets may not be…

WFH: A “new normal” that requires its own boundaries

In the last month since I've updated this site, the world - both my own and everywhere - seems to have taken a sharp left turn. Among the multitude of changes our household has been adjusting to, I have now been working from home for nearly four weeks. Thousands of people worldwide are making the…