BUILDING CAPACITY
The size, scale, scope, and ambition you have around impact matters.
Founding Executive Director of Youth Speaks and Brave New Voices, I am an award-winning writer, producer, strategic advisor, progressive educator, cultural activist, coach, and the current Executive Director of KALW Public Media in San Francisco.
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I've developed several frameworks over the years to help you name and reach your organizational goals, map out your vision, and tell your organization's story. I embed coaching, impact assessments, and equity-centered practices into all we'll do.
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Working with dozens of organizations across the country, I've raised over $65 million, and continue to partner with some of the most impactful and creative organizations in the country.​
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Together we will dream your future vision, define your intended impact, tell your story, give shape to your organization and program design, and map out strategies to finance and operationalize it all.
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Areas of focus include: Strategic Planning / Fundraising and Communications Strategy / Youth Engagement & Educational Strategies / Organizational & Program Design / Executive Hires / Board Development / Executive Coaching.
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Some Current & Recent Projects Below
CURRENT & RECENT PROJECTS
KALW PUBLIC MEDIA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
A beloved San Francisco Bay Area institution, KALW 91.7 FM is a community-based public media hub known for producing local news, arts, and music programming for more than 80 years. KALW airs popular NPR shows and produces and curates content that reflects the ambition, passion, and resilience of the Bay Area’s people and their place in the world. It is now a leading incubator of podcasts that center a diversity of voices and a stunning degree of creativity and social relevance.
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KALW is renowned for its in-depth, award-winning local productions, including Crosscurrents, Your Call, The Spiritual Edge, and Uncuffed, which is produced by men who are incarcerated at San Quentin and Solano state prisons. Also an esteemed part of the local music scene, the station amplified that legacy in 2021 by adding 20 new hours of new and eclectic music featuring six dynamic Bay Area DJs who broadcast from 25th Street Recording, a world class recording and multimedia studio in Oakland.
THE APOLLO THEATER
APOLLO STORIES
Designed and helped launch a major national education and impact initiative, Apollo Stories, to reimagine the role of performance to facilitate youth-led public conversations. Initiated model in partnership with the staged and HBO productions of Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Helped oversee the hiring of Black educators to create curriculum and digital learning environment, raise initial resources, and am currently serving as a Strategic Advisor.
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER
Served as an embedded advisor, directing Strategic Initiatives and Strategic Growth. Supported the Founding Executive Director/President Favianna Rodriguez during a merger and organizational transition (bringing together CultureStrike and the Citizens Engagement Lab), while serving as leadership coach and helping direct strategic planning and growth, including updating financial and operational plans while hiring an executive team. Overall, helped to launch this exciting field-wide initiative that supports artists and storytellers of color across the country to support positive social change.
FIRST PEOPLES FUND
Served as embedded advisor through various projects, including supporting the launch of a major fundraising campaign to increase the organization’s long-term capacity. Supported organizational strategic planning, and strategic communications goals, as well as helped with planning of a major anniversary event. Highlights include We The Peoples Before production (Knowing, Honoring, and Sharing Indigenous America) and a nationwide education and impact initiative so educators and students can travel a path that centers Indigenous experiences of dispossession, adaptation, reclamation, and resilience.
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THE REDFORD CENTER
Worked as an embedded advisor, serving as partner and Executive Coach to Executive Director and Board to map out next phase of organization, including building a leadership team and new programmatic models as part of strategic planning process. Helped launch a $10+ million Legacy Campaign, and supported the raising of initial $6 million. Built up internal communications and development capacity, as well as new organizational narratives for next phase of operations. Co-Led on Executive Search for Deputy Director and other leadership staff, and re-designed national educational initiative (Redford Center Stories) among other projects.
POINTS NORTH INSTITUTE
Led a comprehensive strategic planning process for Points North Institute, the launching pad for the next generation nonfiction storytellers.
CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION LAW & POLICY
​UCLA LAW SCHOOL
Helped create a narrative strategy to mobilize multiple audiences to help change the immigration system in the United States and recognize the historical racism inherent in so many of its practices.
YOUTH SPEAKS
21 Years as Founder & Executive Director. Started as an all-volunteer grassroots organization and became an internationally recognized leader in the field.
A NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH THUY TRAN
Strategic Planning. Executive Hires. Communications Strategies and So Much More.
Thuy is a cultural strategist who specializes in the building and strengthening of arts institutions, with particular expertise in the film and media industries. For the past 20 years, she has been an advocate for the arts as a catalyst to transform lives and communities.
Thuy has extensive experience leading strategic planning, program development, communications, board development, and executive searches for a myriad of institutions. Throughout her career, she has prioritized race and gender parity by creating strategies and approaches that use equity as a framework to achieve social change impact, internally and externally.
OTHER PARTNERS INCLUDE
WHAT'S NEXT
Purpose. Impact. Narrative. Capacity.
Whether helping organizations merge to become something new, building out national educational initiatives, hiring and designing executive teams, facilitating strategic plans and fundraising campaigns, crafting communications strategies, creating media assets, coaching organizational leadership or more, my goal is to support you to better articulate and reach your goals.