From grand retreats to intimate gatherings, every staff interaction is an opportunity to deepen relationships and foster organizational cohesion. I have deep experience producing successful staff events of all shapes, sizes, and budgets.

All-Staff Retreats

At Environmental Defense Fund, I was a producer of the annual All-Staff Retreat for 5 years. I was responsible for curating the entertainment, coordinating, writing, staging, and producing the talent show and staff awards, developing the employee expo hall, marketing the events and logistics to staff, and about a thousand other things.

The 2023 retreat scored record-high ratings in the post-retreat survey, and will always be a career highlight that I’m very proud of.

This video was shot and edited during the event, and shown at the end of the last day as a reminder of the connection and warm fuzzies it inspired. The staff awards shown at the end were literally presented minutes before the video was shown to staff!

All-Staff Town Halls

When I arrived at Environmental Defense Fund in 2019 and reviewed the state of their internal communications cadence, one important component felt very out of step. Their quarterly all-hands meeting had the sterile name “All-Staff V-Conn” and the itinerary was an equally uninspiring roundup of updates from teams around the organization.

We played around with the format a lot over the years, and I continuously collected feedback from around the organization to ensure the meetings were inclusive, meaningful, and energizing. The most impactful changes we made were:

  • Changing the name to “Town Hall” to evoke a more welcoming environment, where communication is 2-way and transparent.

  • Implementing “Question-only Town Halls” during periods of major organizational change to ensure voices and concerns were heard and answered.

  • Scheduling two sessions so staff in every time zone would be able to attend during reasonable working hours.

  • Exploring technology options to offer live captions and translations.