By Sara Veltkamp, Minerva Strategies – A couple of years ago, I was waiting for a flight in the Addis Ababa airport, when I struck up a conversation with a white South African. About 15 minutes into a conversation that was not about race, he blurted out: “I’m not racist or anything. I have…
Minerva Musings
Sara Veltkamp By Jordan Kercheval, Minerva intern— My diet used to consist of Kraft mac and cheese and corn dog baskets from the local bar in my college town. McDonald’s chicken nuggets? Give me a 20-piece. But then I started to pay attention to the ways diet interacts with some of our world’s most pressing…
Minerva Strategies By Sara Veltkamp, Minerva Strategies — I’m not a particularly fearful person. I’ve been accused of being the opposite – doing things just for the sake of doing them without enough fear of the consequences. But a recent run-in with award-winning journalist Ira Glass revealed how fear has played a role in my decision-making, and…
By Joy Portella Minerva’s long-time client the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) cranks out comprehensive, almost real-time data to help people make better decisions about health policies, investments, and everyday choices. IHME has had a big month. Minerva’s Global Team partnered with them to roll out findings from two groundbreaking studies published…
(HINT: That’s a real thing) By Joy Portella I’ve never been a journalist, and I have definite Fourth Estate envy. I’ve been oddly flattered the dozen or so times in my career when someone’s asked me: You used to be a journalist, right? That’s why I was almost giddy to spend a gorgeous…
Malia Mackey – Cornell student, gymnast, and overall amazing lady – served as Minerva’s goddess-in-training and intern this summer. We were thrilled to have her. She left us with parting words of wisdom. We hope you enjoy them. 1. Words matter. Minerva’s business is built on the principle that words matter. They should be consistent,…
by Sara Veltkamp I recently had the privilege of being in the field with the Ethiopian team of our client Dignity Period and photographer Joni Kabana. We visited rural schools in the Tigray and Afar regions in north and northeastern Ethiopia. Our goal was to get photos of and stories about the girls, boys, and…
by Emma Trayte, Minerva Intern I am happy to say that in my ten weeks as Minerva Strategies’ intern, I only scrambled for coffee or lunch orders twice. Also unlike many internship opportunities, I learned a lot about fistula. The word “fistula” was one I had heard before but knew nothing about. Hamlin…
by Johnny Merolla It was summer of 2013. The USS George Washington was on a port visit in Hong Kong. The foam from clinking beers started to slick the streets of Lan Kwai Fong, where most sailors decided to post up and “decompress” from our time at sea. Our decompression was about to be…
By Amanda Clark, Minerva Strategies – There are currently 263 million children and young people not in school, 60 million of them living in dangerous conflict zones. Fast forward to year 2030 and we’re looking at a world where more than half of the world’s children – 800 million out of 1.6 billion –…