I'm a Creative Director and Graphic Designer in Virginia.
I help brands find clarity, tell better stories, and avoid design decisions they'll regret in five years.
I am a Creative Director and brand strategist with two decades of shaping stories, building identities, and leading creative teams. I built and ran an award-winning agency before stepping into higher education, where I now guide the visual and narrative direction of the University of Lynchburg. My work lives at the intersection of clarity, imagination, and community impact, and I believe great design does more than look good; it creates belonging, builds trust, and moves people toward possibility. I am currently pursuing my master’s in Nonprofit Leadership with the goal of consulting for nonprofits that are struggling with their message and identity, helping them find the clarity, language, and structure they need to do their best work. The following site is a showcase portfolio of what I have learned in my 612 course, as well as a glimpse into what I have gained from my 600 History of Nonprofit course. Enjoy.
Welcome to Brand Therapy
This is the space where creativity slows down long enough to think. Where design isn’t just about colors and logos, but about clarity, confidence, and the story behind what we make. Brand Therapy is part journal, part classroom, and part mirror—a place to explore the psychology of branding, the craft of storytelling, and the quiet work of becoming who you say you are. VIEW ALL INSTAGRAM POST HERE @trybrandtherapy
The Brand Therapy Manifesto Post
A line in the sand.
No more pretending. No more pretty lies.
Branding isn’t a costume.
It’s truth. Strategy. Story.
And it’s time we start acting like it.
This is where the mask comes off.
Where promises meet proof.
Where real brands begin.
View Full Instagram Post
Diversity in your brand image is like a good book Post.
If every page looked and sounded the same, people would lose interest. The best stories are built on many voices, layered perspectives, and unexpected turns. That’s what pulls a reader in and makes the story feel alive.
Your brand works the same way. When people see faces, cultures, and experiences that reflect the real world, they connect on a deeper level. They don’t just scroll past. They pause, they listen, they stay.
Academy Center for the Arts
I examined 100 posts on social media, evenly divided between Instagram and Facebook. Each of the posts was coded on a range of variables from content type to call-to-action, as well as emotional tone and interactivity. This made
patterns far simpler to discern. For example, posts advertising an event were far and away the most prevalent, but they did not always have the greatest engagement. Compared to posts relying on storytelling or impact, however, those tended to be the ones to garner the greatest number of shares and commentaries.
The research also revealed how important it was to incorporate loud and clear calls-to-action. Posts inviting followers to directly register, to purchase a ticket, or to share an experience did better than generic announcements. Incorporating hashtags also became relevant. Three to five hashtags on a tweet was the sweet spot and in line with best practices in the industry. Posts without hashtags or lengthy chains of hashtags did less well.
View the FULL AUDIT here.
The Academy Center of the Arts’ Instagram and Facebook accounts can be compared across reach,
engagement, and call-to-action performance. Engagement is higher on Instagram, averaging nearly
double that of Facebook, but both platforms show consistent activity from their audiences. Reach
follows a similar trend, with Instagram producing more views on average, while Facebook maintains
steady visibility.
Calls-to-action show strong alignment between the two platforms. Both rely most heavily on ticket
purchases and event registration, with smaller shares of donation or engagement-oriented CTAs.
The similarity in CTA mix demonstrates that the organization approaches both audiences with the
same strategy for driving action.
View the Academy Social Media Below
This survey was designed to understand how people really experience nonprofits on social media. I wanted to know what earns their trust, what content they actually engage with, and how much local impact influences their willingness to support a cause. Fifty-eight people responded, sharing how they think about nonprofits they first encounter online and how they prefer to connect. The three charts on this page capture the core patterns that shaped my recommendations.
The first chart below, “How much do you trust a nonprofit you first discover through social media?”, reveals a skeptical audience. Over a third of respondents (36.2%) said they do not trust a new nonprofit at all until they research it, and another 44.8% described themselves as “cautious but open.” Only a small minority generally trust nonprofits on sight. This tells me that organizations need to build trust before asking for money. Instead of leading with urgent donation appeals, they should use introductory posts that explain who they are, show the people behind the work, and clearly state how donations are handled. Clean branding, consistent messaging, and transparent financial snapshots help move people from cautious to confident.
The second chart, “What type of nonprofit content are you most likely to engage with?”, is almost lopsided by design. A full 62.1% chose short videos or Reels, and 31% selected single photo posts. Live streams and everything else barely register. This data points to a clear content strategy: lead with short, story-driven video and strong images. Nonprofits should focus on 15–60 second clips centered on one person or one outcome, paired with concise captions. Longer live streams or text-heavy updates can still exist, but as supporting pieces, not the main event.
Trust and content format come together in how stories are told. Because people are cautious, every emotional story should be backed by a small dose of proof. A short Reel about one community member, followed by one or two concrete numbers, can both move hearts and answer the “Is this real?” question in the viewer’s mind.
The third chart, “How important is it that a nonprofit serves your local community or region?”, shows an average rating of 4.57 out of 5, with 69% selecting the highest rating. Local impact clearly matters. Nonprofits should make local impact the hero of the story by naming neighborhoods, showing recognizable landmarks, and tying each call to action to visible change close to home. When short, visual stories of local impact meet a cautious but open audience, social media becomes less about background noise and more about meaningful, trusted connection.
1. Start with trust-building, not fundraising
The trust chart shows that 36.2% of people do not trust a nonprofit they first see on social media, and 44.8% are “cautious but open.” I recommend that nonprofits treat the first few touchpoints as an onboarding sequence: introduce the mission, show who’s on the team, explain how donations are handled, and highlight existing partnerships or accountability measures. Only after that clarity is established should strong donation asks appear regularly in the feed.
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2. Use story-driven short video as the primary format
With 62.1% of respondents favoring short videos or Reels, video should not be an afterthought. Nonprofits can build a library of 15–60 second stories that each focus on a single person, family, or program moment, using captions to add context and links. This matches how people actually consume content and gives the organization multiple chances to reinforce its mission in a format the audience already prefers.
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3. Support video with high-impact single images
The same content chart shows another 31% leaning toward single photo posts. I recommend pairing each key message with one strong, authentic image—ideally of real people and real places—plus a concise, emotionally grounded caption. Together, short video and single images create a visual rhythm that keeps the organization recognizable in a busy feed.
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4. Make local impact the hero, not the backdrop
The local importance chart (average rating 4.57/5, with 69% choosing “5”) tells me that what you do locally matters. Nonprofits should deliberately mention neighborhoods, schools, and landmarks in their posts and show how specific dollars or volunteer hours change conditions close to home. When people see their own community on screen, the work feels less abstract and more urgent.
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5. Tie every emotional story to a small proof point
Given the high levels of caution in the trust chart, stories need receipts. My recommendation is to end each story post—whether video or image—with one or two concrete numbers: meals served, students tutored, nights of shelter provided. This combination of narrative and data helps answer the quiet “Can I trust this?” question that lives behind most social media scrolling.
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6. Build clear local calls to action off your strongest visuals
Nonprofits should turn their most powerful local stories into direct but specific invitations: “Sponsor one backpack for a student at this school,” or “Help fund one more night of safety at this shelter.” Short, visual, local posts with crisp calls to action give cautious but open followers a confident next step instead of a vague appeal.
This survey confirmed something I see every day in my work: people are not passive “followers,” they are active decision-makers. They are cautious, they are visually driven, and they care deeply about what happens in their own backyard. The charts on this page make that clear. Trust is fragile. Short, well-crafted stories win more attention than anything else. Local impact is not a side note, it is the headline.
For nonprofits, that creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to stop treating social media as a bulletin board and start treating it as a relationship space. The opportunity is that the path forward is visible in the data. Earn trust first. Tell real stories in the formats people actually watch. Show proof of impact, especially close to home. If organizations lean into those patterns, the gap between “I saw a post” and “I took action” gets a lot smaller.
600-History & Foundation of Nonprofit
This course explored how nonprofits actually work, and how to lead one with clarity and integrity. We examined the history that has shaped today’s rules, the charters and bylaws that grant (and limit) authority, and the public promises—mission and brand—that build trust in your communities. We connected mission to measurable outcomes, money to behavior, and values to everyday decisions.
This short paper is a reflection on the Signals Not Noise: Moore’s Law lesson and how its ideas apply to nonprofit work. Using the “second half of the chessboard” and the grain-of-rice story as a starting point, it argues that nonprofits behave a lot like that board: growth is slow and fragile at first, then suddenly exponential once the right systems are in place. Drawing on my experience as a Creative Director, I connect this idea to modern digital tools—social media, online fundraising, and AI analytics—and explain why digital-first nonprofits are better positioned to scale impact quickly than organizations that rely only on traditional methods. The paper closes by reframing nonprofit marketing: it should not just sell services, but help organizations cross into that “second half of the chessboard” where their mission multiplies and transformation becomes real.
