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…
Minerva Musings
Minerva Strategies 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 –…
Header photo © Joni Kabana By Sara Veltkamp, Minerva Strategies – Disconnection has become a national challenge. Much of the political polarization plaguing the US is a result of Americans not feeling connected to each other. People on our coasts and in major cities have radically different world views than those in the middle…
Sara Veltkamp By Amanda Clark, Intern, Minerva Strategies— Like many Americans, I watched President Obama’s farewell address last week with a mixture of awe and sadness. While I am apprehensive of the proposed policies and rhetoric of the incoming administration, Obama encouraged the nation to embrace inclusive change and gave the upcoming generation of Americans his…
I love the promise of the New Year. It’s one of my favorite holidays as it celebrates the things on which I thrive – uncertainty, hope, starting over, and novelty. I do not know what’s going to happen this year, but I am hopeful about the possibilities; I get to wipe my proverbial slate clean…
There I was, donning full operating-room garb, watching an accomplished surgeon begin the one-hour procedure that would change a woman’s life. The patient was a 35-year-old mother of six children – five living, and one stillborn after an obstructed labor several months earlier. That harrowing experience left the mother with a fistula, a hole between…
Joy Portella By Kelly Boudwin, Minerva Strategies – Five months ago, I was an anxious post-grad nervously scrolling through job listings wondering if anyone would take me after a few gap years of self-exploration. I saw a listing for a summer internship with Minerva Strategies – a communications consulting firm focused on helping nonprofits, foundations, and for-profit businesses…
By Sara Veltkamp, Minerva Strategies – More than ten years ago I came across an Aquarius horoscope that I cut out of the Anchorage Press, a weekly paper published in Anchorage, Alaska, where I was living at the time. The clip has been lost in my subsequent travels, but the suggested “mantra” for the…
By Sara Veltkamp, Sr. Associate, Minerva Strategies — Heroin use can bring out the worst in people, and I’m not talking about the users. Try this experiment: Google “heroin overdose deaths,” locate the first media story, and then scroll down and read the comments to the article. You’ll discover that the stigma toward heroin use is…