Film & Video
Hill to Hill
Virtual reality film
Role: Concept, writer, producer, grant acquisition & impact strategy
Key metrics: 21 virtual reality screening events, reaching an audience of 5,294 and converting 1,619 into advocacy actions — a 30% conversion rate
I spearheaded the creation of POW’s first virtual reality film by pursuing and securing a $130,000 grant through Google’s Daydream Impact program—a competitive initiative supporting nonprofits using immersive storytelling to drive change.
After 1.5 years of relationship-building with a Google contact, I successfully earned the grant (the largest Google had ever awarded a nonprofit of POW’s size at that point), conceptualized the story arc, and served as a writer and creative consultant in collaboration with Duct Tape Then Beer. The resulting film, produced in partnership with The North Face, follows athletes Kit DesLauriers and Brody Leven as they climb Nevada’s Terminal Cancer Couloir and travel to Washington, D.C. to advocate for climate policy.
I also developed and led the film’s distribution and impact campaign, ensuring it reached audiences in both the outdoor and policy worlds, ultimately driving awareness and action around the intersection of adventure and climate advocacy.
(30 second promo for full VR film)
Dear Mr. President
Short film
Role: Writer, producer, distribution strategy
Through the fall of 2016, I led a nationwide campaign with POW partners Ben & Jerry's and New Belgium Brewing, hosting letter-writing events (complete with a co-branded beer and ice cream) where thousands of attendees wrote letters to the incoming administration asking for comprehensive action on climate change. The plan was to hand-deliver them during our spring lobby trip to Washington.
By the time the election had come and gone, it was clear there would be no EPA nor any receptive leadership to engage on the issue with during our lobby trip. In fact, that year’s lobby trip was canceled.
Not wanting the campaign’s effort to be in vain, I pivoted, shifted the concept, and asked myself three things. First, where can we potentially get this new president’s attention? In 2017, it was Twitter. Second, what medium would be the easiest to share and most impactful? A short film. Lastly, who will be the best messengers? To me, it has always come back to the youth, and future generations. They are the ones who will live with the outsized impacts our leadership makes today. Plus, they would be the hardest for him to criticize. With that in mind, over the course of two days, with minimal budget, filmmaker James Q Martin and I produced (he directed) Dear Mr. President, with a group of schoolchildren making their own pleas to the new administration.
Once we completed the film, I built the distribution around POW's alliance of professional athletes and creatives, who tweeted it at Trump directly across a collective reach of more than 10 million followers. We called it a Twitter Blizzard.
It didn't move the administration, and I didn't expect it to. But it did put those kids' words in front of an audience that a closed-door lobby meeting never would have reached. Later that spring, I was asked to introduce the short film at MountainFilm Festival in Telluride, Colorado, before a feature film by renowned environmental photographer and filmmaker James Balog in front of a sold out crow. While on stage describing how the film came to be while introducing POW’s work, we had a QR code on the screen for the audience to take real-time action while they were engaged in the moment.
Role: Producer, creative direction, agency and budget management, distribution
The fall PSA was the first project I took on at POW in 2014, and I produced a new one every year through 2018 in tandem with Duct Tape Then Beer, a creative agency I worked with closely across campaigns. Working with a small NGO budget, I secured b roll donations from much of our athlete roster and their talent agencies. And while the founder, Jeremy Jones, gets credit for this particular donation, it helps when a band like Pearl Jam offers free use of one of their songs (see second video). The most important thing about these spots was their energy and how they would be received by the group we were targeting in a very specific setting.
I ran distribution on two tracks. Each spot ran ahead of Teton Gravity Research ski and snowboard film premieres nationwide every fall. This put us in front of a captive theatrical audience of exactly the people we needed: skiers and snowboarders with a direct stake in a warming winter. Additionally, I planned scheduled releases to POW's alliance of professional athletes and creatives to carry on their own social channels that had a combined reach of 13 million.
The call to action was evergreen, and deliberately so. We needed the PSAs to remain timely regardless of when or where they were seen so they included a QR code to sign-up to POW’s mailing list on the screen and at a table with merchandise and information set up at every stop. Once people were in our system, we could reach them with the specific asks as policies shifted and campaigns were developed. The PSA was the top of the funnel, not the whole pitch.
I was on the road for many of the premieres as POW's representative, wearing most of the hats as the third full-time employee. In those early years, hearing a theater full of people cheer for a climate PSA was an incredibly validating feeling. It told us we were on to something.