Kara Neesen Email & Phone Number

Washington, DC

• Manage a 4-person communications team responsible for all cross-channel communications: training, webinars, email, newsletters, technical and system updates, website content and management, presentation slides, etc.
• Mentor team to develop professional skills, own responsibility of individual projects, overcome challenges, set and achieve performance goals, and track metrics for outreach initiatives.
• Create 18-month communications plans for weekly tracking of milestones and progress of all program outreach.
• Counsel and guide upper level leadership in communications strategy, presentation, and rollout.
• Build and maintain relationships with external clients, serving as their liaison for problem-solving within the program, including client contacts at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and similar.
• Develop messaging and training process to help the team answer client questions in open forums and follow-ups.

Washington, DC

• Develop and execute strategic, targeted communications plans for organization-wide projects and efforts.
• Work with members at all levels of the organization, including executive leadership, to gather content for articles, stories, white papers, and other communications.
• Identify success measures and monitor effectiveness of communications through data and metrics.
• Own and maintain key communications tools: USAC Style Guide (AP Style), Salesforce Marketing Cloud, etc.
• Subject matter expert and coordinate for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, handling all training, access, permissions, and governance, and serving as the point of contact for Salesforce communications.
• Served as interim Shared Services manager during a transition in leadership, changes in technology, and organizational shifts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Washington, DC

• Identify and implement strategies to reach target audiences, collaborating with subject matter experts to develop content relevant to the appropriate parties.
• Oversee communications quality and project progress: review outgoing communications, maintain project lists, give status updates, and manage checklists.
• Make recommendations and implement practices for process improvements, including for major projects.
• Selected for the Aspiring Leaders program, for high-performing individuals to hone leadership skills; culminated in a Capstone Project on horizontal communities of practice presented to executive leadership.

Washington, DC

• Edit all communications before release or publication including newsletters, bulletins, webpage updates, and crisis communications, plus coordinate with those respective teams to collect and manage information.
• Design, write, and maintain website pages, including LifelineSupport.org.
• Technical writer and editor for the E-Rate Legacy Systems Decommissioning Assessment (ELDA) for the FCC.
• Helped to navigate call center transition, working with the BPO and internal call center management to set the customer service tone for outreach communications.

Atlanta, GA

• Create media content (photos, blog posts, videos) for distribution via social media and marketing campaigns.
• Manage social media accounts for LeadAbroad: content creation, monitoring, and engagement tracking.
• Capture photographs, interviews, and video clips to post on LeadAbroad website.

Columbia, SC

• Develop cross-channel communications strategies and materials: social media, press releases, media collateral, website content, event coordination and production, and more.
• Maintain relationships with a range of clients including Harbison Theater at Midlands Technical College, Central Carolina Community Foundation, and the City of Columbia.
• Completed multiple media-related projects for the city's Famously Hot New Year's Eve party, attended by more than 35,000 people with a local economic impact of more than $1.2M.
• Created and published a social media campaign for Scoopy Doo, a local artisan creamery to effectively market to students the new feature of using their "Carolina Card" as payment.

Columbia, SC

• Manage a team of 6 student agency representatives as lead for all client communications and project deadlines.
• Create logo, packaging, and marketing materials design to rebrand Carolina Biosoap to "Naturally Carolina."
• Concept with the USC School of Law staff to create a poster campaign for the Coastal Law Field Lab program.