By The Minerva Team—
2019 was a great year for the Minerva team—we grew in numbers and geographical reach, collaborated with friends near and far, and gained new insights to bring with us into 2020. Here are some team highlights from our year.
New goddesses
We added two new team members who allow Minerva to up our game, providing better and smarter insights to our clients. Catherine Salgado joined Minerva this summer with more than a dozen years of experience leading communications focused on Latinx and other underrepresented groups. Malia Mackey, who was our intern in summer of 2018, returned as a full-time team member this fall after finishing her degree in human biology, health, and society at Cornell University. We are psyched to have these new goddesses on board!
Rebranding a Seattle institution
The Seattle Milk Fund has been working for 100+ years to meet the needs of low-income families in the Puget Sound region. Earlier this year, they were sorely in need of a fresh brand to better reflect their programs and inspire more people to contribute to their efforts. The Minerva team was privileged to lead them through the brand development process this past summer. The collaborative process was a chance to flex our creative muscles as we worked directly with their leaders and families they serve. The resulting brand—Goodwin Connections—pays homage to one of their founders Eda Goodwin and emphasizes the supportive connections they offer parents who need a helping hand.
Minerva East
Minerva Goddess Sara Veltkamp opened our Washington, DC office this past summer. This new office will allow Minerva to better serve our East Coast clients and provide national insights from the US capital to our others. We’re thrilled that Minerva is now bi-coastal and we look forward to bringing you more news from Minerva East in 2020!
A year of learning
We had a blast diving into topics new to Minerva and important to our sector. We had the privilege of working with the Global Environment Facility to learn more about international efforts to protect the environment and we were able to put the ideas of knowledgeable, passionate people out into the world. We got to go deep on the WASH sector and efforts to change WASH systems through our work with the Conrad N Hilton Foundation. Financial inclusion was a hot topic in the office as we worked with MIX, an organization that uses data to drive forward inclusive fintech, digital financial services, and agricultural finance. We also started an exciting project to support the Port of Seattle’s new Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and learn effective, in-depth strategies for equitable communication.
Going local for global health insights
Minerva has been partnering with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) for seven years to spread the word about their Global Burden of Disease study in all corners of the world. But this year we did something new: tackling IHME’s Local Burden of Disease studies, which offer hyper-local data insights on health. In May, Minerva and our global partners conducted media relations in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond the impact of HIV in the region. Then in October, we led a global outreach effort around the progress and challenges of low- and middle-income countries in reducing child deaths.
Then we went even more local to our office neighbors, the Washington Global Health Alliance. We quickly became acquainted by the awe-inducing work that their members (most in our Seattle backyard) are doing to push the envelope on global health innovation. It was an exciting time of year with their Pioneers of Global Health Awards and we are looking forward to continuing our office collaborations in the new year.
Getting by with a little help from our friends
Minerva is a lean, dynamic team and we have the privilege of working with many partners who make our work bigger and better. This year we’ve been able to collaborate with David Brotherton of Brotherton Strategies to tackle homelessness in eastern WA, Edith Asibey of Asibey Consulting to communicate about new visions for health in the US, and partners in more than a dozen countries to spread the word about global health trends. We also sat down for great conversations with our kindred spirits Brad Kahn from Groundwork Strategies and Annie Alley from Firmani & Associates.
What are we looking forward to next year? Doing more great work for great organizations. Give us your complex, nuanced issues. We want to go deep and help others understand why they’re so important.
