Storytelling for Good with Kerry-Ann Hamilton
About This Episode
Welcome to this 50th episode of the Mission Forward Podcast! It's been a true joy sharing these conversations with you all on the power of communcations, this field we love so much.
Our guest this week is Kerry-Ann Hamilton, a communications strategist with decades of experience in media relations, cause communications, and crisis management. She serves as principal consultant at KAH Communications where she brings her experience to bear for nonprofits and cause-related organizations and, for us, her work is a shining example of the balance of ideals, values, goals, and mission.
In fact, we want to amplify this statement — which you'll hear when you listen to the show — because we've been repeating it like a mantra all week. When asked why she started her own firm, she replied, "I was excited to work at scale with organizations and bold change-makers who want to create the world they want, and are restless about the world we have."
We create the world we want because we're restless about the world we have.
Kerry-Ann's experience in nonprofit communication is extensive, and you'll hear how easily she's able to disabuse us of our misunderstandings about the work and power of the nonprofit in the hands of the passionate and engaged leader.
She shares her own inspirations this week: Atlas of the Heartby Brené Brown and The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister.
You can learn more about Kerry-Ann Hamilton and the work her team is doing at KAH Consulting. We're honored to amplify her experience and expertise on the show this week!
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Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to this 50th episode of the Mission Forward Podcast, where each week we bring you a thought-provoking and perspective-shifting conversation on the power of communications. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B corporation. This season, we are talking with an impressive mix of nonprofit and foundation leaders, along with a few of the consultants that I admire most, and together we are taking on some of the most common challenge points and barriers to moving nonprofit missions forward.
Carrie Fox:
Before we get into today's show, I want to share two quick things. One, we have a new home for this show over at missionforward.us. There you'll find all past episodes, opportunities to become a member, giving you bonus content and sneak peeks into new shows, and a whole lot more. Check it out. You might also know that I write a weekly column each week called Finding the Words, where I offer insights on communications in life. Stay tuned at the very end of today's episode to hear me share one of those columns here on the podcast. And now onto today's show.
Carrie Fox:
Today's guest believes in storytelling for good. She and I have that in common, along with a lot of other things too. Kerry-Ann Hamilton has nearly two decades of experience in media relations, cause communications, crisis management, and, quite honestly, so much more. She brings her experience to bear for nonprofits and cause related organizations through her firm KAH Consulting Group. Until we officially met a couple years ago, so many of our shared connections would say, "Carrie, you have to find a way to work with Kerry-Ann."
Carrie Fox:
And according to Kerry-Ann, folks are saying the same thing to her. We have been really glad to have made that happen finally this year. Kerry-Ann, welcome Mission Forward.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Thanks, Carrie. It's such a delight to be here.
Carrie Fox:
I'm so glad to have you in the space today. I would love to have you tell me a little more about this awesome journey that led you to start your firm.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
For the past two decades, I've worked in mission driven work, from international development to higher education, focused on access and opportunity. For the last six or seven years, I've worked in cause communications, social impact consulting, and I thought, what if I did the thing that I were most afraid of, which is to start my own practice? So many people said, "You'd be phenomenal." And I said, "Only really brave people do that." There was a moment in late fall of 2019 where I said to myself, "What if?"
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I took the leap and the rest is history, but really excited to work at scale with organizations and bold change makers who want to create the world they want and are restless about the world we have and want to create a world that's better for ourselves, for families, and for our community. That inspired the journey.
Carrie Fox:
You're a storyteller right from the start, because you've just got me hooked in so much. I love that word restless, that idea like just feeling like you need to take action and do something. It's so interesting because, Kerry-Ann, when I started my firm, I was 25 and I knew right away that I wanted to start something that would have a focus on cause related organizations and nonprofits. I remember someone saying to me, "You're a fool. It will fail in the first year. Where do you think you're going to get paid if you're working with nonprofits?"
Carrie Fox:
I'm thinking how wrong they were, one, but also how much of an impact we have collectively been able to make by really centering communications that I think for a lot of folks were for a long time out of reach, right? You and I have both created some offerings that really bring top-notch communications to nonprofit organizations.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Yeah, and they often say nonprofit is a tax status. It has absolutely nothing to do with the running of the business and well run nonprofits. We have so many in our region, maybe more per capita than anywhere else in the country, effectively run passion leaders who are driving change and impacting communities that need it most. For me, I think less about the tax status and more about, what is your mission? What is the problem you are dressing?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
And how do we help you do three things: frame the issues that are really important to you, effectively mobilize action among those stakeholders that can help you to carry that water and drive the change that you want, and then how do we amplify impact? It is not just the sum of activities. It really is activities that really drive action and impact. We're just really excited about our nonprofit partners and social impact leaders who come on this journey with us to co-create solutions.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I think that is what truly makes our process and our approach different is that we don't assume we have all the answers.
Carrie Fox:
I would love to get your take on how your business has evolved. Now, I'm remembering that March 2020, when there was a, what will we do, right? The nonprofits who suddenly realized there would be no galas, which in some cases result in a large percentage of their revenue in any given year. There would be no gatherings, and there was going to need to be a significant pivot. How has that moment when so many nonprofits were thinking about pivoting and cause organizations, how did that affect how you then consulted with your clients and organizations?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I was really compassionate and empathetic because leaders just were like the rest of us, right? Struggling with how do we move the mission forward. Again, so much uncertainty, whether we're talking about a nonprofit in our region who provides instruction to adult learners, who then we saw lots of coverage on the digital divide and how it impacts young people, kiddos, K12, but here were adults who were going back to get their GED or high school equivalency and they had no internet, no tablet.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I remember working with Kojo on a segment just before his retirement raising awareness around this issue of adult learners and the digital divide. Thinking about Martha's Table and others in our region who were on the front lines addressing issues of food insecurity, which just catapulted as a result. I was truly inspired by clients who said, "Look, two people are counting on us. We've got to roll of our sleeves, put on our masks, and go and not retreat."
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
That vigor, that commitment, that fearlessness that we must show up in ways that support our communities just gave me a lot of hope to humbly stand alongside them in driving change and closing the gap that really started to widen as a result of the pandemic. I was just inspired by clients who stepped up and stepped forward really in a major way. I would say also, I saw more inclusive work happen as a result of the pandemic. We flew a lot. The year prior to the pandemic, I flew 200,000 miles in nine months.
Carrie Fox:
Oh my gosh!
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I'm glad to be deplaned as the result. But because we were doing so much on Zoom, provided there were technologies that worked, we could bring teams of people from across the country to be part of a brand workshop, that those voices may not necessarily have been the ones who were flying from coast to coast or to the middle of the country.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
We heard from voices we didn't hear from historically, because the platform of everyone coming to their computer, to their mobile phones and joining a conversation and helping to shape the mission, vision, brand narrative of an organization, we just didn't have that historically. I thought more inclusive processes. We got to use technology in a way that bridged time zones and distance and the work was better for it, I thought.
Carrie Fox:
I agree. It's so interesting that you raised that example because just on this last week's show, we were talking with Justin at East Boston Social Centers and he talked about how this shift to have the community really lead the brand process. It not only made the final brand better, but it deepened the ties in the community too. And that that I am certain will remain long after folks go back in whatever capacity or whatever that looks like, that we have learned that that norm of sitting around one table with whiteboards, there's nothing that is as good as being together in person.
Carrie Fox:
That is for sure. However, there is so much that can happen in a digital environment, assuming that folks have access to that digital technology.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I would say you are absolutely right, Carrie, and I would say maybe at March, we were going to start this like very inclusive listening process with community leaders. There were two youth serving organizations in our region that were planning on merging and we needed to do a reputation analysis and really hear at different points what assets these organizations are both bringing to the table. We had to talk to maybe 30 community leaders across the region. We were set to start in March, and I said to our fearless leader and partner, "We shouldn't start this conversation now."
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I said, "We should wait at least a month or two." We didn't start those conversations until late May. And then all that was happening with George Floyd in the ensuing weeks. We gave everyone the opportunity at the start of those conversations to, one, reschedule, kind of opt out, change the course of the conversation because there was so much happening around.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I think that shift where we center humans or humanity or share dignity in our process versus just barreling to the business, that is a shift that certainly is a cornerstone of how we operate as a team, but I want that to be durable and lasting because we're people first. The human centered approach to consulting, more importantly, human centered approach to partnering with different organizations who share our values and mission, like that should be the cornerstone of how we work forever.
Carrie Fox:
I want to call in my new friend Deirdre, who I met last week at a retreat. She was talking about how these last few years have affected her organization, and she said the first year was just complete uncertainty. If we think to 2020, we didn't know what the next day was going to hold. There was so much around us that we were unsure about. 2021 they described as the time being slippery, right? We would lose track of what day it was and what month it was. It was just the strange time we lived in where we were still in COVID and we were trying to come out.
Carrie Fox:
In fact, we did, and then we went back in. It was all slippery. And then she talked about, as we enter into 2022, this new feeling of moving forward for her organization. It's interesting. I want to ask you about this, because in our war world, we are seeing this pace play out that I think can be pretty detrimental at how fast folks are now maybe trying to catch up from that slippery time and wanting to make everything that they're doing the priority, right? And maybe losing sight of why they set out to do it in the first place.
Carrie Fox:
It's been an interesting few years of how organizations have navigated through and now into 2022, how they're experiencing and moving their work forward. How are you experiencing your clients and your work these days? Is there anything in particular that you're seeing as trends?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Yeah. I definitely I see some urgency and urgency in a way that the health scale of it could be questionable just because there has been so much kind of lost time, if you will. There are lots of forces, right? There are forces of, well, we're approaching a milestone, or our board really wants us to accelerate on pick your priority area. Sometimes there is such a focus on speed and urgency that we don't have a moment to step back and focus on what's truly important.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
There is an opportunity in conversations with clients to just understand what are those drivers and to the extent that we can diffuse some of the unhealthy momentum that doesn't allow us to be the most strategic and have the greatest impact is one of the places where I'm having more of those conversations, where we just have to take a breath because the speed, the impact on the team, how it impacts partners, how it impacts grantees. We have this codependency. We don't want to lose all the lessons we learned in 2020 and 2021.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
If we go back to the way we were before, then we'd have missed the opportunity to truly evolve. My observation is that there is a breakneck speed to just cover a lot of ground really quickly. I have concern about whether or not that impacts the quality of what we're trying to do in terms of nurturing relationships, really seeing the shared humanity, really honoring where people are because COVID is still with us. Not maybe as looming ways as we take our masks off per the CDC and local jurisdictions, but it is still with us, as people continue to grieve and process this new reality.
Carrie Fox:
One of the projects we're working on our team is putting together a lessons learned document for the field of public health communicators on what has been learned from how we communicated in the depths of COVID and how we would apply those learnings to future public health issues. I want to actually pivot to that, to think about the role of communications, right? What we do every day and how we see that value in organizations. I'd love to just maybe start a conversation on talked about at the top, the power of communications, right?
Carrie Fox:
The power of communications to bridge divides and sometimes that's purely information divides, setting expectations early on, ensuring that the vision at the top of an organization is carried through to an entire organization and maybe actually flipped too, right, so the vision of the team carries up to the vision of the leadership. I'm curious if there's anything that comes to mind for you on what you see when nonprofits work best, how communications is integrated into their day-to-day practice.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
It's really important at the outset for the organization to set forth what are its strategic priorities and not at the tip of the spear where this is a governance decision or folks who are part of the senior leadership team, but truly across the organization. What are our values? What are our organizational priorities? Set those forward. And then to what extent then communication helps to drive that? If we start by leading with tactics, well, it would just be wonderful to have our CEO author an oped or appear on nightly news or WAMU, that's the wrong place to start.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Having organizational goals and communication goals in lockstep, and making sure that those support each other and have a very symbiotic relationship, I believe it works best because we don't then get led by all the glossy stuff. We need a video. Well, what's the story we're telling? What is our organizational narrative? What's our relationship to those that we work alongside with, they're in the community, families? Those kinds of decisions are made at the organizational level, at the strategic planning level and our principles and all of that pillars.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
There are so many different frames. But at the core, the communication supports that. It just provides a lot of organizational clarity in choices that you make. We're going to invest here versus here. I've seen that work best where they're in lockstep and not communications or the tactics driving what we do as an organization.
Carrie Fox:
I was curious, I wonder if we break that down and think about why that is such a common function inside nonprofits, that they naturally go to tactics. A lot of organizations naturally go to tactics first, right? And maybe it's where the communications function sits, right?
Carrie Fox:
\That I've seen a big difference in organizations on if the communications function is a junior role that's designed to be managing social media and there's expectations that the junior role is the one that's going to lead all of that work, which I think is a false expectation, versus when the communications function is sitting at the executive team and guiding and counseling and coaching, but also challenging, right?
Carrie Fox:
That is such an opportunity I think for that communications function to be really saying, "What's the point of doing this? What's the purpose of doing? What are we expecting to see as a result of this?" Again, setting those expectations clear.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Yeah, I think that's really important, and we are seeing more shift towards we need a senior leader with responsibility and oversight for communication. It's not a post a day on Instagram that gets five likes. It's like, well, there's a lot of, again, activity, action, impact. We've seen that shift to a place where there's greater ownership and there's a link strategically to the communications goals and what we're trying to accomplish. Because at the end of the day... And then there was this shift of, well, should communications be under fundraising?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
And then that could be a whole other conversation, Carrie. But what I often count on clients in thinking about communications fundraising, that whole dynamic of like, what should come first and who should report to whom, it's like all of this is about brand raising. Think about your communications efforts and your storytelling as brand raising, then you get partners who get excited about the mission and the work and your impact, and they're investing and you increase visibility for the organization.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
I think it's a false choice to say, "Well, we really want to put all our communications eggs to raise money, or we just want to tell great stories." Those two under the brand raising strategic house just gives you more bang for your buck, and it takes out this false choice of, shouldn't we just be raising money, or shouldn't we just be telling great stories?
Carrie Fox:
Right. They can't be done without one another. I love that phrase, brand raising. That's a good one. You're making me think back to... There was an editorial cartoon in Stanford Social Innovation Review years ago, and it was a non-profit director talking to a funder and the funder said, "What's your mission?" And the nonprofit director said, "Anything you want it to be." It goes back to that idea of what you were saying like, know why first, right? Know your purpose, know your vision, know your reason for being, and hold onto it until such time as it makes sense to revisit it, right?
Carrie Fox:
But that the idea of, I don't know, maybe adapting and evolving to where the dollars are can be very detrimental to an organization's ability to move their mission forward.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Yeah, and we're seeing that, I mean, with our philanthropic partners that we have the opportunity to support. We see that they evolve too, right? They evolve and say, "Okay, we're only go going to invest in systems change." And if done responsibly, there are transition funds, all the things. You share that with grantees well in advance. There are multiyear investments. There are responsible ways to shift priorities period.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
If we just capitulary because a foundation or a funder is changing focus, then you lose your organizational rudder, which is, as you just said, catastrophic, because what it does for morale, what it does for the kind of underpinning of the organization to just be rudderless and go where the dollars are. It's a suboptimal place to be.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
That being said, I do think funders have the opportunity to approach nonprofits, and we're seeing some of this, approach nonprofits less with the answers of here are the things we want to fund, but asking questions about where there are opportunities for investment. So that it's more of a dialogue and there is less of that dance of, "Well, I'm going to do..." As the cartoon said, "Whatever your mission is my mission." But I do think that nonprofits and philanthropy can have a more open conversation.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
We're seeing signs of it where there's intellectual humility on the side of the philanthropic partners, where they're not assuming, well, we have all the answers.
Carrie Fox:
I mentioned at the top that we're really digging into this concept of communications as a tool to advance justice, and there's a few things I mean by that, right? On one case, it's how are we helping and advancing and guiding our nonprofit partners and being able to do their work effectively in a way that advances legislative change, in a way that advances how and when philanthropic dollars are being distributed in a more equitable fashion, right? If I think about that on the kind of public side of the way an organization operates to advance justice in the community and on the issues they work on.
Carrie Fox:
The other side of that is how organizations work internally. We have found, especially over the last few years, this being more in tune with how the norms inside any organization can limit an equitable or inclusive or accessible workplace. You mentioned at the top, whether it is this increased focus on urgency or the focus on quantity and delivering and developing and deliverables over the quantity of those deliverables and goals or saying there's only one right way to do something versus thinking about creating space for collective insights.
Carrie Fox:
How have you seen that show up, if at all, in the organizations that you work with? And is there more conversation happening or maybe not yet on thinking about that internal communications that can be happening to support an organization's ability to move a mission forward?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
There are lots of nonprofit partners now who are late stage, middle stage, early stage on doing work related to culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And for a long time, being mission driven was a cover for, well, we don't have the healthiest boundaries. We don't have the healthiest practices that really sustain and invest in and see the humanity in team members. Nonprofits have not always honored and lived into their values in terms of how we show up, compensation and variability and all of that.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
With Me Too 2.0 that have rocked nonprofits and food and media and everything else, not around assault, but around behaviors and practices. I am heartened every single time, even black led organizations say, "We need to look inside. We need to look internally and help to change the culture, so that we don't reinforce cultures that are harmful or toxic to our employees." Kudos to my peer millennials and others younger who are really pushing for organizations to truly live into their values, that there shouldn't be daylight between what we purport to stand for.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
It kind of promise performance, right? Closing the gap between what we promise and how we show up. And that gives me a lot of hope and inspiration about the changing from the inside out, the rebuilding from the inside out to align with values that are just values, that are equitable values, that are inclusive and organizations that create a place of belonging for everyone,
Carrie Fox:
For those who are listening, I think it's a great reminder that now is a good time just to be checking in on what's business as usual inside your organization. That doesn't mean you need to challenge and blow things up and disrupt everything in the workplace, but it does mean, when's the last time you looked at that policies and procedures? When's the last time you considered how your internal communications function works, right? When's the last time you questioned it and had some discernment over how you work as a team and as an organization?
Carrie Fox:
It might start to uncover maybe why an organization isn't as diverse as they want to be, or why folks are leaving after a couple years. There's that moment of, I use that word again, discernment, right? Quiet reflection on how an organization's operating, that some of your biggest barriers might actually be in house. If you address those, you might, in fact, be able to move that mission forward in a phenomenal way that you aren't able to today.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Another fascinating trend building on that, Carrie, that I've seen is the number... And for lots of reasons people have moved, natural attrition, but upwards of 30 to 40 to 50% of staff have turned over in a virtual world. Building culture and facilitating a conversation for a nonprofit partner in a couple of weeks where about 40% of the team have never met. They both met on Zoom. They have no sense of who their colleagues are. That is part of the challenge of being in this virtual world where we don't get to meet at the water cooler.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
We don't get to meet at the coffee machine and really get to know each other as humans first versus my deliverable is late. I'm waiting on you or the transacting. That is a challenge of being remote and people have moved farther away, but there are so many new people within organizations who are just trying to catch up with a task with their portfolio, with their responsibilities, but then lose that connective tissue that is so critical to work and, more importantly, so critical to community.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Nothing is better than human to human connection, right? Versus what you've just described so eloquently there is just transactional communications. We are coming to the end. That went like that, so fast, but you are one of the most intentional communicators and business leaders that I have had the pleasure of meeting and seeing work in action. The way we like to end these is turning back to you and saying, what inspires you? What are you reading? What are you learning about? What's got you stewing and excited about what comes next?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Yeah. A colleague gave me this wonderful book for Christmas, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, really long name, but Brené Brown. Anything she writes, I read. But it's just been wonderful to just sit back and just take it in not ferociously like page by page, but taking in moment, months. Last week, I read about the difference between awe and wonder and really just letting that sit and reading it three more times, and I may need to read it four more times, but just sitting with that idea of what it takes to wonder, and then how do we experience awe?
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Atlas of the Heart is I think an essential, essential read. I'm also reading on the business side of things, and I think there are intersections between the professional and the personal, but on the business side, I'm reading The Trusted Advisor. And just really thinking about when I talk with clients, I'm not a vendor. We don't have vendors. We're partners in this work, but how to show up as an advisor and how to build trust. It's not instantaneous how to build trust over time.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Those two are really addressing both sides of the brain right now, but, more importantly, of the heart as well, head and heart, in thinking about, how do I show up as a leader? How do I show up for clients? How do I show up for my team? How do I show up for my family as I balance this new journey as a new mom? Navigating all that feels, again, very, very urgent and really centering on what truly is important.
Carrie Fox:
Wow! What a perfect place to end today, Kerry-Ann. Thank you so much for sharing that and for all of the heart and the head that you bring to your work and how much you've inspired and helped organizations move there, work forward in ways they would've never been able to if not for your great thinking and big heart.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
Thank you so much, Carrie. This was such an honor. Thank you.
Carrie Fox:
Thank you. All right, we'll see you soon.
Kerry-Ann Hamilton:
See you soon.
Carrie Fox:
Check your light. A few weeks back, I shared the story of Rabbi Yossi with three colleagues, and I wanted to share with you today too. Thousands of years ago, Rabbi Yossi, a famous Jewish sage, was walking down the road when he encountered a blind man carrying a torch. Rabbi Yossi thought his behavior was foolish. What use can a torch have for a man who all his life walks in darkness? He asked the blind man why he carried a torch. "Rabbi, this torch is not so that I can see you. It is so you can see me.
Carrie Fox:
When you can see me in the darkness, you will also be able to see the dangers in the road. That is why I carry is torch." The story came up fresh for me recently after sitting through a Zoom session with a presenter who was clearly uncomfortable on the platform. He was an expert in his own right, but not an expert communicator and some folks were distracted by his style. I felt flummoxed by it all. Here was a presenter invited to share his expertise, but his message was lost when it all became clear that his natural talents were not in the communications department.
Carrie Fox:
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting, uncomfortable and struggling through your content, knowing full well that all eyes are on you, that folks are counting on you for this presentation, but it's just not going as you had planned? I have, and it's an awful feel. I think again about my recent meeting, but this time from our presenters point of view, meeting a new group for the first time, trying to find a zone of comfort in an otherwise uncomfortable situation.
Carrie Fox:
Not everyone thrives in these awkward, always on digital platforms where we're staring back at ourselves all day and where it's nearly impossible to feed off the natural body language of a room. I used to think that the best thing in this scenario was to offer some coaching to the person who was having the hard time. I'm a presentation trainer after all. That's where I could offer this person some meaningful assistance, but Rabbi Yossi's story suggests another way is possible.
Carrie Fox:
That by simply holding up our own light a little bit higher, we can see beyond what's going wrong to understand and appreciate the full picture. Because the light we carry is ultimately for each other. These days are hard for all of us in many different ways. The best we can do is hold the light we have up for others. Because I promise you this, when you hold your light up for others, you might also end up seeing better as a result, whether or not the full picture looks the way you expected.
