Empower Schools
Brand &
Positioning
I led Empower Schools’ brand refresh and built shared positioning, messaging, and standards for a federated national nonprofit working across communities, states, and programs.
Results
Alignment, recognition, and growth.
Outcomes from the broader communications program, including the brand and positioning work.
98%
Staff equipped to communicate
Agreed they have what they need to communicate about Empower, up from 58% in 2023.
An increase of 40 percentage points.
Stronger recognition
Among key stakeholders
A clearer understanding of Empower’s work and expertise in conversations with funders, policymakers, school leaders, and partners.
Coherent brand system
Across a federated national organization
Shared positioning, messaging, and visual standards gave state and program teams a common identity they could adapt to local contexts.
74%
Growth in AI visibility
Share of tracked AI answers mentioning Empower increased from 13.4% on July 17 to 23.3% on October 7, 2026.
The challenge
Explain the full scope of Empower’s work.
Empower’s work connects local school partnerships with state policy and systems change. Its brand needed to explain that relationship clearly to funders, policymakers, education leaders, and community partners.
Empower operates through a federated model: state and program teams lead work within their local contexts, supported by shared organizational strategy and services. As its founding communications leader, I needed to establish a common identity and clear standards that teams could apply across those settings.
The strategy
Connect policy, partnerships, and programs.
Make the systems work visible.
I developed messaging that connects Empower’s community partnerships with its policy and thought leadership. The narrative explains how experience in schools informs policy, and how policy creates the conditions for more communities to innovate.
Give the work a shared structure.
I organized the story around three connected Ways We Empower: Innovation Schools, Early College and Career Pathways, and Rural Collaboratives. Each has a clear role within the larger organization’s strategy.
Keep national consistency and local relevance.
I created a common narrative that teams could adapt to their state’s policy environment, partnerships, and community priorities, while keeping local leaders and educators central to the story.
Brand systems & governance
Make the strategy usable.
I translated the strategy into refreshed brand expression, voice and tone guidance, reusable templates, and standards for organizational materials.
I also developed an AI Communications Governance SOP and AI guidance within the brand book, addressing human review, source verification, privacy, and creative standards. Together with reusable AI instructions, these extended the brand’s expectations into new ways of working.
Organizational alignment strengthened as well: 95% of staff understood key objectives and their contribution, up from 45% the previous year.
AI leadership
Turn AI into a competitive advantage.
I owned AI governance for Empower Schools, setting standards for accuracy, privacy, brand quality, and human accountability while developing tools and workflows that expanded what communications could do.
I connected AI adoption to the brand strategy: protecting Empower’s credibility, maintaining a consistent voice, and making its expertise easier to find. That included organization-wide principles, practical communications guidance, reusable AI instructions, and Signal, an app I built to inform content and positioning decisions.
Governance & trust
AI for Empowerment
I developed Empower’s values-driven approach to AI, defining how AI can support the work while people remain accountable for decisions, relationships, and results.
Read AI for EmpowermentCommunications standards
How Empower Schools Communications Uses AI
I translated those principles into guidance for writing, research, design, code, and review, giving the team clear expectations for using AI while maintaining the quality of its work.
Read the communications guidanceApplied AI
Signal
I designed and built Signal, an SEO and AI visibility app that helped significantly increase Empower’s AI discoverability, strengthen its positioning, and uncover strategic insights to guide communications strategy.
Explore the demo
Brand applications
Putting the brand into practice.
Brand identity & standards
Positioning, visual guidance, and reusable tools for applying the brand across the organization.
View brand assets
10 Years of Empowerment
An anniversary publication applying the refreshed brand to a decade of partnerships, policy work, and Empower’s organizational story.
Read the anniversary publicationSelected publications
Turn expertise into a public story.
Innovation Schools Action Summit
A platform for expressing Empower’s position on public school innovation through convening, thought leadership, and event communications.
View the Action Summit website
Unlocking Student and Educator Empowerment
A national policy report translating Innovation School research into recommendations for policymakers, district leaders, and funders.
Read the policy report
Texas Partnerships with the Leadership Academy Network
A case study connecting school-level flexibility, university partnership, and sustained school improvement in Fort Worth.
Read the Leadership Academy Network case study
Discover FMI
A Colorado case study showing how rural collaboration expands access to career pathways, industry certifications, and work-based learning.
Read the Discover FMI case studyStrategic impact
A common identity across a federated organization.
Shared positioning, practical tools, and clear review standards helped teams communicate Empower’s role while responding to their own communities and partners. The same federated structure shaped the central agency service model I built to support delivery across the organization.