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Here you’ll find previous projects I have worked on, including graphic design, philanthropic campaigns, photography, and videos I have produced. My resume is located at the bottom of this page and under the “About” tab.


The Knopp Family Focus Video

While serving as the Public Relations Liaison for Penn State’s THON I oversaw all media output for the organization’s Cancer Cannot Philanthropic Campaign.  I was instantly inspired from the moment I first read the Knopp Family story - this is a story that will always stay with me as it gave me so much hope throughout my own cancer experience. The family’s story had such an immense impact on me, I knew it would not only be a highly successful video for our philanthropic campaign but that it would also work to help and support families that had lost their children to cancer or those who were dealing with a child’s terminal diagnosis.  After many pitches of the story to THON directors, and countless hours on the phone with the Knopp family, ensuring them that their story would be told with dignity, grace, and authenticity, I filmed and directed the production of the Knopp Family Story. It was profoundly inspiring to watch this family muster up the courage to turn their story of loss into something that could help others and honor their son’s selfless way of life and legacy. This video, from pre to post-production, will always be something I am incredibly proud of.  The creation of this project was a very positive and healing experience for the Knopp and it enabled me to form an incredible bond with them.  As a result of my work in the production of the Knopp's story, I was awarded the Courtney O’Bryan Outstanding Volunteer award.


Excedrin Advertisments

With hopes of working within pharmaceutical adverting, I created these advertisements with ambition for the future.

 
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Creating a Brand for Penn State’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research Center

When I first started at Penn State’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research Center, a new logo and brand were needed for their newest project series, ONE PATH. The process of creating a logo and brand that embodied the entirety of the research center’s preferences and purpose was unlike any of the prior creative work I had done before. From creating a palette and branding guide to creating a logo, the entire process took around seven weeks. Since implementing this logo and brand nearly two years ago, I have taken ownership of the brand and worked to start transitioning all the center’s research projects to have logos and content that adhere to the branding guidelines.

 

The finalized ONE PATH logo.

One of the handouts I created complying to the branding guidelines I created for The ONEPATH project

 

An additional logo artistically transformed to adhere to branding guidelines.


 

48 Hour Creative Challenge

On a late Friday evening, I received an email asking for a creative campaign to represent and advertise a deodorant company. Considering a 48-hour timeline, pandemic conditions, and the limited resources I had at home, this challenge both excited me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. After creating the tagline “Even in a Pandemic, You Still Need To Wear Deodorant”, I quickly realized that I would have to be in front of, behind, and beyond the scope of the camera. After scripting and storyboarding, I began a race against time to bring my vision for the campaign to life. From setting up my personal studio lights and tripod around my house to rapidly creating graphics and editing, I transformed my house into a makeshift studio in an attempt to produce the campaign content needed for Instagram. After a busy 48 hours performing in multiple creative positions, I created the videos below.

 
 

 

Center for Childhood Obesity Research Whiteboard Animation on Food Refusal

In my most recent project for Penn State’s Center For Childhood Obesity Research, I produced the six-minute video below. The video is a culmination of my graphic illustrations, video production, editing, and audio work which I have been providing for the research center for over a year now.

 

Graphics for Penn State’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research

I am currently employed by Penn State’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research. Within this position I use both my science and art/communication focused degrees to manage all media output by the center.  Over the past few months I have been creating the following images to communicate information regarding healthy mealtimes, hunger fullness, and teaching during mealtimes for teachers in the classroom working to facilitate an educational and healthy mealtime experience for their students. The images are placed within the research center’s interactive modules which are distributed to teachers that teach within Pennsylvania’s Head Start Child Care program. The images were created with direction from the nutrition researchers at the center.

Other Family Focus Videos

The Knopp family focus video was just one of the three family focus videos I produced while serving in my role as the Public Relations Liaison for THON. The following videos showcase two incredible family stories that were used for philanthropic campaigns over social media. These stories reach tens of thousands of people, as they are used to motivate and inspire our 16,000+ volunteers and circulated to donors to help them better understand the work that THON does.  The videos are also shared with the families THON works to support to remind them that they are not alone in their battle. I had the honor of selecting each story, pitching them, scripting and conducting the interviews, and working closely with each family to creatively direct the production in a way that would authentically tell their stories. The inspiration I gained from working with each of these brave and strong families is something I carry with me every day.

 
 Images taken while producing the Silbaugh Family Focus VideoCallie (pictured left), a member of the Silbaugh family, wanted to help me conduct the interview of her parents discussing how THON supported them through Callie’s cancer journey.

 Images taken while producing the Silbaugh Family Focus Video

Callie (pictured left), a member of the Silbaugh family, wanted to help me conduct the interview of her parents discussing how THON supported them through Callie’s cancer journey.


American Heart Association Public Speaker and Lobbyist

After receiving a heart transplant at age 13, I became a public speaker and advocate for the American Heart Association.  At 15 I was selected as the organization’s Go Red for Woman Lunch In speaker, where I shared my experience with heart disease to hundreds of people. This experience gave me strong presentation and speaking skills while allowing me to use my experience to help others. In addition to speaking at events, I have spent several years lobbying for bills that would mandate CPR to being taught in all New York schools. Through lobbying I learned at a young age how to present my story of heart disease in a persuasive and confident manner to government officials. I also often support the organization with different video campaigns, as shown in this video here.

 

Donate Life Public Speaker

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In addition to speaking for the American Heart Association, I have dedicated an extensive amount of time volunteering and advocating for organ donation. I have attended numerous community events and spoken about the importance of organ donation by sharing my story of being an organ recipient at the age of 13.  I have educated high school health classes about the importance of organ donation as well as presented at Naturalization ceremonies.  I have also volunteered at DMVs, blood bank donation centers, and organ donation events such as races and fundraisers, at these events I would have a table set up to educate and increase the organ donor registry. This experience forced me to learn how to tell my story of organ transplantation in a persuasive but also empathetic manner to convince people to register to be an organ donor.


Teacher Interviews For Interactive Module Use

One of my primary responsibilities when I started my internship (which has now become a part time position) at Penn State’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research Center was to produce video interviews of teachers discussing meal times within their classrooms. These videos were placed throughout interactive modules used to educate teachers and parents on what a healthy and educational mealtime experience should consist of for children in and outside of the classroom. Once I gained a firm understanding of the scientific goals of the desired content in the interviews, I scheduled filming times at a preschool, and managed the filming set up and process, including conducting the interviews. Upon the completion of the filming I edited each interview and promptly returned them to the research center. Below you will find two of the many interviews I produced for this portion of the project.

 
 

Zoom Interviews

Corona Virus limited the number of teachers I could interview for the research center. After brainstorming for a couple of weeks I discussed the idea of conducting the interviews via Zoom. Once the research center approved of the idea, I managed all of the production logistics including contacting, scheduling, and filming with each new teacher. This creative solution allowed for the module videos to be edited and completed all within two weeks.  The research center was very pleased with this alternative as they initially thought the teacher interviews and testimonial videos would have to be canceled and removed from the research modules due to the pandemic. Below you can view two of the many teacher videos created with the use of Zoom.

 

Thon Photography

Photo taken of me at one of my favorite THON events in 2018 - Family Carnival

Photo taken of me at one of my favorite THON events in 2018 - Family Carnival

 

Before serving as a photography captain for THON, I spent two years as a volunteer photographer for the organization. This experience taught me a great deal about the importance of empathy when behind a camera. It has been one of the greatest honors to provide ever lasting memories and smiles to families through photos that I was privileged enough to capture. Beyond providing THON families with images to memorialize their children, I am thankful that my photography has been able to serve as a staple within the organization’s social media content, brand management, and countless published projects. Below you will find some of my favorite photographs taken at THON events which I’m humbled to say have been used on social media posts, billboards, advertisements, and magazines. To view my THON photography portfolio click, here.

Private Photography

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After serving as a volunteer photographer for multiple different organizations on campus, upon request I started photographing Penn State students privately for different occasions, primarily graduation sessions.  This ultimately led to the creation of my own small business during my college career.  Managing my own small business taught me a great deal, that my classes at Penn State could not, while exposing me to so many great clients who I still talk to today. Below you will find some of my favorite shots from my hired photography work, however if you would like to see more from my graduation sessions click here, or check out the ‘Photography’ tab for the rest of my photography portfolio.


Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Every year Childhood Cancer Awareness month is celebrated in September. THON, the organization I gladly devoted an immense amount of time and hard work to throughout my college career, uses September as an opportunity to host a month-long philanthropic campaign which shares inspiring family stories. The family stories that are shared help to educate the community about childhood cancer, inspire people to passionately volunteer and encourage donors to donate. Most of the campaign is run through the organization’s social media accounts. One of my greatest responsibilities as THON’s PR liaison was to plan and create all of the social media posts and family stories shared for the month. In the summer I began reading through several hundred of THON’s family stories.  I narrowed down the stories in alignment with the organization’s branded “four diamonds” needed to beat cancer: wisdom, honesty, courage, and strength. I worked to ensure a diverse collection of stories were selected to show the various cancer journeys that the organization works to support. From bereaved stories, adult and teen survivors, to children currently battling cancer, I creatively formatted each story to reflect each of the four diamonds. From there, I helped to select images that could be paired with the stories and coordinated the posting of each story on all online formats. Below you will see the completion of the campaign on THON’s Instagram, along with one of the featured stories.

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THON’s One Day Campaign

While serving as the photography captain for THON, I worked on a philanthropic campaign referred to as One Day. The premise of the campaign was to show what the kids that THON supports, have ambitions of doing One Day, now that they have made it through cancer. The campaign consisted of individual photographs of the different children supported by THON, with the sky behind them. Once the photographs were taken, the images were edited to reflect what each child ‘One Day’ wanted to be. I coordinated the photography schedule and logistics with families; and helped to edit and deliver the images to our graphic designers.  I also assisted the graphic designers with creating and editing the backgrounds as needed. Below are the raw shots paired with the final product.

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THON Mentor

Perhaps the most rewarding part of the two leadership roles that I held within THON was that it enabled me to serve as a mentor to many different students with different backgrounds.  THON has over 16,000 student volunteers.  During my last two years at Penn State I guided many students through the process of learning their full potential, aiding in the development of helping to grow their ideas into something that could make a larger impact in the organization, and the competitive interview process that is required to step into higher leadership positions within the organization. With each position serving as a yearlong spot in the organization, I also spent a great deal of time mentoring my successors to ensure projects that I started were continued on and that they were able to make the most out of their time in their position.

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Photog Website

While serving as head of photography for THON, I created a new website for the organization to catalog all of the photos taken at events over the year. THON’s photography website was something that the organization tried to do for years but constantly encountered obstacles that made the website an unachievable dream. Once I had the opportunity to oversee the photography group, I made it an immediate priority to create THON’s photography website. The website took a total of four months to create, through connecting branches of the organization that rarely ever worked together before, like Technology, Public Relations, Photography and THON’s Executive director to meet and work together. I created a task force of vastly diverse volunteers and managed many different conflicts that came from people of various backgrounds working together to create a common product. Seeing so many different types of people work together and overcome different obstacles to create something that was thought to be impossible at the beginning was incredibly rewarding. Click here to view the website or look below to see screenshots from the website.

Capture the Connection

During my last year as a student volunteer for THON, I began the endeavor of creating a new program that would work to better express just how much the organization works to emotionally support the families who are also financially supported by our fund. The idea of the program was to connect the organization’s volunteer photographers and videographers with Penn State’s philanthropic organizations which are individually paired with THON families to emotionally support the family throughout their cancer experience. While THON works to often advertise how much the organization financially supports its’ families and cancer research, I created this project to be able to show potential donors the emotional support the organization offers to the families we support, through the connections built between the families and volunteers. After conducting many meetings and then interviews, the project started with a team that I constructed and led.  I coordinated photography and video requests and the logistics behind Capture the Connection team members attending these special events, in unison with holding weekly meetings to review the progress of the project. THON now has captured special memories such as children celebrating the end of their cancer treatments.  Below are some images from one of the first Capture the Connection events.

Montefiore Children’s Hospital Campaign

 After sharing my experience with heart disease and a heart transplant through volunteering with the Organ Donation Network and the American Heart Association, I was asked by the hospital I received my transplant at, Montefiore Children’s Hospital, to be featured in their advertising campaigns. In addition to speaking at events for the hospital, I was filmed for their TV commercials, radio advertisements, and photographed for billboards along the New York City Thruway. The TV commercials played on the YES Network during Yankee games and within Yankee Stadium. My wonderful experience with the company who filmed the commercial inspired me to become interested in the world of video production.

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