The strongest narratives become lasting change.

Following the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls in 2014, global attention surged around #BringBackOurGirls — but public attention alone does not create lasting change.

At USAID, I helped launch Let Girls Learn to transform urgency into action: building a narrative, mobilizing public voices, and creating the conditions for long-term investment in girls' education.

The initiative grew from a digital moment into a signature White House effort — engaging cultural leaders, aligning government action, and contributing to more than $1 billion in commitments across 50 countries.

The work became an example of how storytelling can move institutions — not just audiences.

As governments mobilized more than $12 trillion in emergency COVID-19 spending, I launched Open Response | Open Recovery to help countries turn emergency action into public trust.

Working across the Open Government Partnership network, we built the narrative framework, coalition infrastructure, and content engine that helped 78 member countries make spending transparent and meaningful to citizens.

The work connected global commitments to local realities — helping civil society leaders, advocates, and governments translate accountability into stories people could understand and act on.

The initiative activated nearly 400 events across 57 countries and culminated in a virtual summit alongside the UN General Assembly, where global leaders publicly endorsed the initiative and advanced new commitments on pandemic accountability. Sixteen OGP members adopted ten pandemic-related commitments.

It demonstrated that accountability can scale — even when the world is operating entirely remotely.

In response to the 2025 disruption across USAID and the broader foreign assistance community, I helped launch Stand Up for AID — a communications initiative designed to translate complexity into public understanding and action.

Working alongside partners across the sector, we built a platform that combined storytelling, analysis, and real-time communications to counter misinformation, elevate impact, and help audiences understand what was at stake.

For the National Women's Law Center, I used extensive audience insights and market data to create the This Is Personal campaign, which recruited a digital network of 500,000 advocates.

Over one year, they took more than three million actions to protect their reproductive freedom. Notably, these advocates were women previously unaware and uninvolved in the issue.

The strongest movements aren't built by activating the already converted — they grow by helping new people see themselves in the story.

I created the Extreme Possibilities digital campaign and exhibit to launch USAID's new storytelling hub with 40 first-person videos highlighting how individual people have benefited from programs and initiatives.

To continue the project's momentum, I trained more than 100 in-country communicators to create their own powerful stories.