Social and Environmental Impact Management passionate about music, art and rockonomics. Marie develops and executes projects and tools with creative change makers and the power of music, technology and community. She strives to activate global audiences with their heads, hearts and hands. An international worker and first generation immigrant exposed to refugee challenges through her childhood friends, Marie’s work focuses on creating empathy, equity and culture with grit. Her toolbox leads to strategic and community led solutions. Marie specializes in fan engagement/management, social and environmental impact amplification and optimization, and strategic communications. Her communications and storytelling feature diverse representation.
Marie believes in the power of business and show business to have a profound social and environmental impact. The role of audio and listening as forces to break down our divisive walls is of particular interest to her. Marie facilitates inclusive ecosystems where stakeholders (artists, fans, employees, partners) collaborate and connect, not just transact. It’s great for the world, good for brand and business and life changing for people. Marie excels at researching, cultivating and managing strategic public-private partnerships. She loves networking and working cross-functionally; it satisfies her learning appetite. Marie naturally develops internal and external communications to make social and environmental impact an integral part of global organizations’ cultures. She likes working on a range of topics from gender equality to racial and environmental justice to civic engagement and more.
A THNK fellow, Marie is versed in innovation processes-from researching to designing to testing to measuring and scaling. The combination of tools and technologies she uses, shapes, and discovers allow for the collection and integration of qualitative and quantitative data. As for fun outside of work, Marie likes to hike the world with her dog Atlas!
Philanthropy, Engagement, Outreach, Partnership Advising
- Lead a multidisciplinary team genuinely and rigorously leveraging fan/volunteer bases and related artists and entertainers in the contexts of philanthropy and behavior change for social and environmental impact. The team is currently building a fan/artist inter-empowerment digital product and testing content for it.
- Research fan/volunteer experiences online and offline with a focus on best practices to engage fans including in social and environmental impact endeavors. Includes convincing fans to participate in qualitative interviews and actions. Administer and analyze qualitative interviews. Design qualitative interviews with psychology and neuroscience of social/environmental impact expert.
- Help optimize social and environmental impact via local and global community engagement, internal collaborative strategic planning, social and environmental issues expertise and partnership vetting-management-activation.
- Toolbox: Nation Builder, SenseMaker, Sprinklr, Smithsonian APA Culture Lab, Imagine Dragons’ Foundation volunteer engagement toolkit and more.
The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge is a global competition that rewards innovative science and technology solutions tackling wildlife trafficking issues.
- Played a key role in the successful communications (press/promotional materials, social media, reports, online offline community of practice/knowledge management exchange) partnership and scaling efforts of the Challenge and its Prize Winners. As a result, Prize Winners secured more than 40 partnerships with nonprofits, media outlets, impact investors, government entities, international organizations, tech companies and foundations and leveraged more than $10 M for the development, scaling and impactful implementation of their solutions.
Partnered with the THNK Creative Leadership Program, focused on designing relevance, impact and scalability with renewed energy and diverse co-creation to provide products, coaching and partnerships for innovative social and environmental impact enterprises such as the Amani Institute, Legal Atlas and Internet of Elephants.
Various consulting assignments including
- In collaboration with the Amani Institute, recruit, train and mentor talent to tackle global challenges through social innovation, entrepreneurship and creative leadership. A community of practice that offers workshops, Amani develops people who create social impact including through partnering with leading institutions to develop skills their staff need to volunteer.
- For the Amani Institute, developed and maintained 10+ strategic partnerships.
- In collaboration with The House of Geeks, designed, developed content and partnerships and led crowd funding for social and environmental impact enterprises.
- For Legal Atlas, provided product quality control as a Principal Researcher.
- Produced business plan and fundraising presentation for the organization, one of the largest grassroots peace building organizations in the United States. In collaboration with Ben & Jerry’s and through mobilization of volunteers, creatively educated hundreds of congressional staffers on violence reduction legislation, resulting in Congress passing sections of the Youth Promise Act.
- Community organizer. Mobilized volunteers online and offline. Assisted strategic planning and communication campaigns for the reelection of President Obama. Designed and implemented Illinois’ youth program including research and metrics/benchmarks and volunteer recruitment-training-management in support of key victorious states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. Met all set campaign targets.
- Represented, assisted and advised UNDP Country Director/UN Coordinator and management team on internal, external and technical matters. Rapidly established trusting and effective relationships with superiors and colleagues. Maintained constant communication between staff and management including resolving issues and keeping team on track. Coordinated 2011 Monitoring and Evaluation/Key Performance Indicators measurement efforts. Drafted expert speeches and briefs for Country Director and high-level United Nations officials. Coauthored, with local staff, prizewinning story on UNDP Burundi results. Programs focused on aiding national government and local civil society through post conflict transition, quick impact community self-help projects to meet urgent economic needs, public participation in country’s 2025 Vision and capacity building and infrastructure projects. Secured, through concept review, $700,000 for the construction of a Regional Peace Youth and Employment Center. Produced, on a week’s notice, video featuring Nobel Prize Winner and soccer stars for the launch of Burundi Vision 2025. Performance evaluated as unusual contribution (top 2%).
- Managed a network of 25 country field agencies, ensuring smooth execution of data-driven policy attitudes and opinion studies. Coordinated the completion of 15 countries climate change study for the World Bank. Liaised with the media. Designed and implemented social media strategy. Increased web traffic by 50 percent.
- Authored, coauthored and presented reports, policy analysis and recommendations, and citizen outreach materials. Managed high-level events.
Certificate
LLM (Masters of Laws)
MA
BA
- Openness
- Social and Environmental Impact
- Innovation
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- English and French Fluency
- Networking
- Public Private Partnerships
- International Affairs
- Facilitation
- Events/Training
- Complex Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking
- Creativity
- Empathy
- Marketing/Communications
- Fan engagement
- Negotiation
- Flexibility
(Selected)
- Board member at byebyeplastic.life
- Hackathon for Wildlife Winner for Best Use of Technology (2015)
- Mandela Washington Fellowship Reviewer
- THNK School of Creative Leadership
- India China Institute Fellow (2008)
- Soliya Facilitator-versed online and offline facilitator
- Women in International Leadership, International House NYC
- Seeds of Peace International Camp Youth Counselor
- Phi Beta Kappa
- NCAA Div I College Athlete (2000-2004)
- United States
- Belgium
Available upon request