Kathleen Russell Consulting

Telling Stories Moving Mountains

Current and Recent Projects

Center for Judicial Excellence

Family Court Crisis Film Image Family Law Crisis - Film Production & Forum Planning

KRC provided soup-to-nuts event planning for the third in the Center for Judicial Excellence's 2007 judicial forum series this Fall, Marin Families at Risk: A closer look a problems and solutions. Held at the historic Lark Theater in Larkspur, the event was CJE's largest with nearly 230 in attendance.

A stellar panel of experts opened the forum and discussed potential fixes to a broken family law system. The evening's highlight was the debut of CJE's 40 minute documentary Family Court Crisis: Our Children at Risk. KRC produced the documentary in just two months time, providing creative direction and conducting and editing more than 20 hours of interviews. The film features expert testimony about the deep-seated problems in the family court system and real-life stories of Marin families torn apart by this broken system. We worked with Ludlow Media at every stage of the production process.

Be sure to visit the CJE website -- as with all of the CJE's past events, we've posted a video of the forum here, and you'll find a direct link to a 12-minute synopsis of the documentary here. Kathleen presented the film at the 5th Annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York on January 12th, Battered Women, Abused Children & Child Custody: A National Crisis.

Campaign to Elect Ford Greene

Electing Ford Greene to the San Anselmo Town Council

KRC had a fabulous time consulting on and managing Ford Greene's winning campaign for an open seat on the San Anselmo Town Council this Fall. Go Greene Masthead

We produced an array of campaign materials, beginning with a branded "look" that was carried throughout Ford's website, walk-piece, e-blasts, mailer, postcards and yard signs.

While his materials blew the competition out of the water, the real juice was in Ford's field campaign. Together with our hard-working candidate and his devoted volunteers, we orchestrated an aggressive phone banking and door-to-door effort that ID'ed more than 1,100 voters. We look forward to watching Ford revitalize the Town Council's commitment to serving its residents and businesses. San Anselmans voted for change!

Prosperity Partners

Strategic Communications Planning

The KRC team recently completed a strategic communications planning process for Prosperity Partners, a new Marin County collaborative of public and private agencies and local businesses committed to empowering Marin’s lower income families in the areas of asset development, leveraging and preservation. The strategic communications plan will serve as a launch roadmap for Prosperity Partners, introducing the group’s services to the community and helping raise funds for the collaborative through private and public sources.

The final, graphically designed document includes detailed information about the driving forces behind the formation of the collaborative, programs that will be made available to the community, messaging and materials development strategies required as part of the collaborative’s launch, and details about the funding and support needed to make this burgeoning effort a success. Click here to download a pdf of the plan.

Young Men's Ultimate Weekend

Local Media Hits for YMUW

YMUW Logo KRC helped our friends at the Young Men's Ultimate Weekend generate some local media coverage when Time Magazine ran a cover story about the status of young men in America.

Through a limited but carefully targeted media outreach strategy, we secured two feature stories about YMUW prior to their October weekend in West Marin -- in the Marin Independent Journal and the North Bay Bohemian. Both articles provided readers with a great overview of YMUW's secular, right-of-passage program for young men. Most importantly, the enrollment in the Marin weekend soared after the articles ran in the local press!

Scott Law Firm

Scott Law Website Image Scott Law Website Redesign

The Scott Law Firm came to KRC with an impressive 30-year history of successfully litigating to protect individuals' civil rights -- but no web presence to show it off.

Working with Will-Harris House & Studio, we created a brand new look and feel for Scott Law, successfully establishing the firm's web identity and clearly conveying their commitment to serving the San Francisco community in the areas of Civil Rights and Elder & Dependent-Adult Abuse. Click here to check out their new website.

Alaska Federation of Natives

Materials for the Largest Native Event in the Nation

The Alaska Federation of Natives came to KRC once again this year to produce materials for their annual October convention. From the 65-page main Convention Guide to multiple smaller brochures and flyers, television PSAs and the AFN President's PowerPoint presentation, KRC provided the whole collateral package for this year's event.

In addition to our design and PSA production services, KRC continues to provide website development for AFN's various programs. We implemented frequent updates to the group's main website this Fall, including live-streaming coverage of the convention through Blueberry Productions in Anchorage.

Promoting the Alaska Marketplace: Website, TV PSAs, Print Ads & Brochure

Now in its second year, AFN's Alaska Marketplace 'ideas competition' will distribute a pot of nearly $1 million in award money to entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for encouraging economic growth in rural Alaska.

AFN hired the KRC team to help spruce up the Alaska Marketplace logo (at right), create new materials and revamp AlaskaMarketplace.org. Working with our fabulous graphic designer Susan Bercu, we produced a 12-page brochure about the 2007 competition and a corresponding six-page Alaska Marketplace Business Idea Application.

During the first week of June, we created three separate 30 second PSAs to encourage Alaska residents to apply to this year's competition. We partnered with Blueberry Productions to produce top-notch television spots to run statewide on GCI cable networks. Click the following links to view each of the three PSAs: PSA 1, PSA 2, PSA 3 ~ Please be patient as each video may take up to a minute to load. If you need to download Quicktime click here.

At the same time, we produced four distinct full-page print ads to run in nearly all of the major daily and weekly newspapers across Alaska, from the 6 Alaska Newspapers publications to the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and the Juneau Empire. Click here to view one of our ads.

Materials Development for D.C. Reception Honoring Senior Senators

AFN Reception Poster KRC recently produced an array of custom print materials for a Washington DC reception in honor of Senators Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Daniel Inouye's (D-HI) longtime friendship and commitment to Native communities in Alaska, Hawaii and beyond. A standing-room-only crowd filled the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing room for the event featuring a naming ceremony in which both Senators were given honorary traditional names and a Southeast Alaskan dance performance.

KRC provided copyediting, photo selection, graphic design and production management services for the reception in DC, establishing an elegant look and feel for the event. The KRC team designed and produced an array of custom posters (including the one at right), the event invitation, electronic invitation and e-reminders, and reception program.

Promoting the 42nd Annual AFN Convention

In February we produced a full-color brochure promoting this year's 42nd Annual AFN Convention (cover shown at left) for distribution in Washington DC and throughout Alaska.

AFN's annual convention is the largest Native gathering in the United States, and the largest event of any kind in the state of Alaska each year. This year's event will be held in Fairbanks from October 22-27. This year's convention theme is "Living Cultures in the North" - read more about Convention by visiting AFN's Convention webpage.

Click the cover image at left to download a pdf of the Convention Brochure.

Center for Judicial Excellence

Community Outreach, Nonprofit Management & Legislative Advocacy

As the Center for Judicial Excellence (CJE) turns one year old, this Marin County nonprofit has plenty to toot its horn about. The Marin Superior Court is selecting a Citizen Advisory Council, which was one of CJE's founding objectives last May, and one we never imagined would happen so quickly. The organization's commitment to transparency and effective public pressure is paying real dividends for the Marin community as a whole. CJE Logo

In our capacity as staff and strategic advisers to the CJE Board of Directors, the KRC team manages all day-to-day activities of the nonprofit, from checking voicemail to managing CJE's nonprofit status and providing grant writing support. Most recently we have provided event planning services, materials development and media outreach for CJE's fourth public forum titled Juvenile Justice: The Law & Our Youth while concurrently launching an advocacy campaign to introduce statewide Judicial Performance Evaluations (JPE) legislation in Sacramento in 2008.

We've received overwhelmingly positive feedback in numerous meetings with California state lawmakers about creating a JPE program in our state. CJE's proposed legislation will create a statewide system modeled after JPE programs in 19 other states, including our favorite in Colorado. We're pushing hard for an interim hearing this summer or fall and collecting important organizational allies before CJE's legislation is introduced in January 2008. Click here to download a one-pager about CJE's advocacy.

The Coming Home Project

Media Outreach to Launch a New Program

Coming Home Postcard

KRC was hired at the end of 2006 to help publicize the launch of a new and innovative program to help ease soldiers' and veterans' transitions between war in Iraq and Afghanistan and civilian life.

The KRC team designed eblasts to be distributed by the event organizers, drafted and distributed a press release and media alert, and made customized pitches to a pre-qualified list of media contacts to generate interest in the Coming Home Project and its January 2007 launch event in Berkeley.

Four major network affiliates (KTVU Fox 2, KNTV NBC11, KGO-TV ABC 7 and KPIX CBS 5) sent camera crews to the Coming Home launch event, a community meeting titled Understanding the Realities of War. Prior to the event, articles ran in 8 major dailies from the Oakland Tribune to the San Mateo County Times. Interviews with event organizers were featured on KPFA's The Morning Show, KCBS Radio News and on 5 KCBS affiliates, including KLLC/Alice Sunday Magazine (an award winning morning show with over 60,000 listeners). The Coming Home project and a few of its participants were also filmed and interviewed for the Hallmark Channel's "New Morning" Show.

KRC also worked with ABC's World News Tonight to coordinate their April 28, 2007 segment on the Coming Home Project and its participants. Click here to view the segment on ABC's website.

Friends of the Marin Healthcare District

Strategic Plan Development & Website Production

In conjunction with a newly-formed Political Action Committee, KRC was hired to research, write and produce a 16-page full-color Strategic Plan representing the future of the Marin Healthcare District. The document included an Executive Summary, case studies, a summary of challenges and issues, a full-page describing "green" and sustainable policies, and planning and construction information -- as well as a variety of graphics and charts illustrating data about the District and its demographics. Also included was a historical timeline that captured the development of the District and the controversial policies that formed the current healthcare scenario. Click the image at right to download a PDF copy of the Strategic Plan.

KRC also designed and produced the Friends of Marin Healthcare website, featuring details about the new Political Action Committee and the group's recommended candidates for the local Healthcare District election. Check out the Friends of Marin Healthcare website at www.friendsofmarinhealthcare.org.

Click the project descriptions below to read more about our recent work:

Alaska Federation of Natives

Materials & Website Development for the 2006 AFN Convention

Video Production & Materials Development for the 2006 AFN Leadership Forum

Center for Judicial Excellence

Launching a Nonprofit Community Organization

The Heart of the Game

National Grassroots Documentary Promotion

Young Men's Ultimate Weekend

Media and Community Outreach

Compassion and Choices

Fundraising for the California Compassionate Choices Act