It’s Time for a New Chapter: Announcing the Launch of Another Way Communications

For a few years, I’ve been kicking a dream around in the back of my mind, always as one of those “maybe one day” things.

So it feels wild to share that it’s now real: I’ve launched Another Way Communications, where I help nonprofits build brands people believe in and teams where people thrive.

This is equally one of the scariest and most exciting things I’ve ever undertaken, and it comes well into what has been one of the hardest years of my life.

Hitting Burnout

Early this year, I found myself in such a severe state of burnout that my health became seriously affected. I took extended medical leave and ultimately, over the summer, stepped away entirely from the leadership role I’d held for the past seven years.

There were many contributing factors. Some you’d expect, like chronic overwork, ever-increasing expectations, and an unforgiving schedule, because they have become so normalized and ubiquitous that we downplay their harm.

I was also carrying another invisible load very few knew about: that of being a neurodivergent person with autism and ADHD. The far-reaching implications are too much to unpack in one post, but in an effort to summarize: I lived in a silent but constant state of vigilance, attempting to manage the differing ways I experience the world, translate myself for neurotypical environments, shapeshift to fit established molds, and navigate unwritten rules I didn’t always understand. The cost was exorbitant, but the debt built very slowly and quietly, at first anyway. Then it didn’t, and my body forced me to pay up.

I felt unrecognizable to myself, like a shell of a person. The simplest things became the hardest things. The hardest things became impossible. There were days, many of them, when I wondered if I would ever feel like myself again.

Finding My Way Forward

Eventually, I understood that I never would feel like “myself” again. That had been the wrong goal (an impossible one, in fact). Who I’d been was gone, and amid immense grief and uncertainty, I had to figure out who I was becoming.

It turns out it was someone who is more “me” than I’d ever been. Me as I’ve always wanted to be, if I could let my fear of being too little and too much at the same time stop holding me back. Or at least something closer to that. The journey is still very much unfolding.

One silver lining in all this is that it has given me more courage to speak about my experiences more openly with trusted people, which has, to my great surprise, helped others in their own journeys in ways I could have never expected. So many of us are going through life with quiet struggles we feel we can’t reveal, leading us to feel unnecessarily alone. 

It’s a great gift to learn otherwise. If only the world and the institutions we navigate every day didn’t convey that sharing openly will only make us vulnerable, it might be easier for us all to truly see and help one another, and in doing so, also better see and help ourselves.

Building Another Way

As I turned my attention back to work, I found myself reflecting on what had always mattered most to me.

Throughout my career in nonprofit communications, I’ve had the opportunity to advance important causes changing our world, the privilege of meeting many wonderful people around the globe who entrusted me with their stories, and the great joy of building and leading teams rooted in trust.

I also kept seeing the same challenge over and over: Nonprofits put enormous effort into their missions, yet how they communicate their impact to the world, and how they communicate with the teams who make that impact possible, often go without the attention they deserve.

Good work isn’t enough if people don’t know about it, or if they sense a mismatch between the values they hear about and the ones they see in action. From the stories organizations tell the world to the way leaders talk with their teams, communications can either build support and deepen trust or expose gaps between what organizations say and what people actually experience.

Those gaps remain too persistent, and they come at a high cost. For organizations, it’s trust, talent, and support. For people, it’s agency, belonging, and well-being.

I care deeply about our sector, and I believe it deserves better. That’s why I founded Another Way – to help nonprofits bring both sides together, making sure their communications, inside and out, advance the change they strive for and uphold the values they stand for.

Every day, nonprofits drive incredible change for urgent causes. That commitment to purpose should hold us to a higher standard: one where the same care and values we bring to the mission itself are also evident in how we talk about our impact and how we show up for the people who move that work forward.

My hope is to encourage all of us to think more intentionally about the belonging we create through how we communicate and lead.

That’s how another way becomes possible: when we bring both brain and heart to how we make change.