Board Recognition for September 2022

Christa Chandler, Administrative Assistant to Marnie Allen (Insurance Programs, HR, & Legal Services) started at the ESD July 2022 after spending 8 years as an admin assistant at the School for the Blind.

She was recognized in an email from Curtis Ellis (IT Director):

I felt compelled to email you about Christa. She is truly fantastic, smart, and a pleasure to work with. You have really hit the jackpot when you brought her on board.

Executive Directors Jodi Wall and Monique Dugaw want to collectively recognize the partnership and collaboration between the ECE and Communications teams in their work on an ongoing marketing campaign to support increased enrollment in ECE programs. Team members Yolanda Rivera, Cari Corbett, Ari Vazquez, Fred Gunnerson, and Mika Yoshida worked collaboratively to put together a months-long social media marketing strategy which included social media posts on ECE and ESD accounts, creation of 2 (#) of promotional videos highlighting staff and child care opportunities.

Video featuring staff: https://fb.watch/fwqRKSq9IK/

Data (over the last 90 days):

• Facebook page visits up 128.5% (to 457)
  Page reach up 632.4% (to 9098)
• Instagram page visits up 227.3% (to 36)
  Page reach up 406.3% (to 243)

In August 2022, the Prevent Coalition held the first-ever statewide rural conference on prevention. Prevention & Youth Services Manager, Christopher Belisle, had this to say to Monique Dugaw about the help he received from the Communications team:

I wanted to take a moment to call attention to some of the amazing ways your team has been super heroes to our department and coalition this year. One of the huge reasons Prevent is a leader statewide is because we have you as partners and allies, amplifying our work and constantly taking us to the next level. Your talents and gifts are a huge privilege and asset to the coalition.

On Melissa’s work:

We’re hosting a statewide gathering of prevention professionals called the “Rural Prevention Conference” in October at the Yakima Convention Center. I came to Melissa with some general branding ideas that a committee of volunteers brainstormed and gave her freedom to design a theme according to her own vision. Within just a few days she produced a full conference theme with branded fonts and color palette, and I was truly blown away. This included a Powerpoint template, name tag designs, an email header, a custom folder sticker for participant materials, website icons and a flyer. The designs are incredibly stunning and so creatively captured the committee’s voice/preferences. She was thoughtful to incorporate the tagline “Connection and New Beginnings” that volunteers made into each element, and strategic about how it would translate online a website vs. a promotional swag item vs. a flyer, etc. More importantly, Melissa took care of everything for me – I did not have to track her progress or check in. She kept me updated and asked questions when needed but otherwise she took the entire task of preparing materials and ordering promotional items (tablecloth, pop up banners, giveaways, etc.) off my plate.

On Mika’s work:

Mika played a crucial role while preparing for the same conference. I came to her with concerns about low registration numbers and she quickly pulled together a strategic communications plan for our team to follow. She designed an excel sheet that organized who to contact, when, and what to say. She made an email announcement template and let me connect her with the Health Care Authority to get an announcement in their monthly newsletter. When we started planning, I sent her several scattered emails that went out to various stakeholders and she cleaned them up into a gorgeously written, perfectly clear media release that we could share. And the result was astounding: before I went out of office in late July, we had only 30 people registered for the event. When I came back 2 weeks later, we had 70 people registered. This absolutely would NOT have happened without Mika’s professional intervention, answering our call for a superhero!

On Laura’s work:

Finally, I’d like to commend Laura as well for her support in this process. I used my limited-yet-sufficient skills to create a website that would serve as the hub for people who registered for the event. It was not happy with it, but it got the job done. When I found out we had extra budget, I asked Laura if she’d be able to clean it up for me and give it her magic touch. She agreed, and in just 8 hours of her time, I was presented with the most beautiful website I’ve ever seen! She completely exceeded expectations and did not just “clean it up” but transformed it. She pulled design elements that Melissa had created and transferred the images to little website icons that matched each category of the page, she redesigned the flow of the page and even added a menu so people could skip from one section to the next. She also uploaded the font from the flyer to our website platform. I find myself visiting the website when I need a mental break just to look at the beauty of it. I could not be more impressed with her work – and this is just ONE example of how she’s consistently taken what our team throws together to the next level.