Public Outreach Campaign - Old Rules vs. New Rules

Thea Selby

Next Steps Marketing

• After 10 years in the workforce as marketing and audience director for various organizations, co-founded Next Steps Marketing, a call-to-action marketing firm working with government, media, and nonprofit clients
• Rich understanding of outreach from the governing, the public, and the professional side
• Vice chair of the CA High Speed Rail Authority; and in December, spoke at the U.S. High Speed Rail Conference in Los Angeles on the need for better public outreach to combat biased media for California High Speed Rail
• A blogger for Publishers Executive on the topic of digital marketing for more than three years
• As chair of the San Francisco Transit Riders, has headed numerous public outreach campaigns including the 2015 “22 Day Muni Challenge” in which Twitter® and selfies helped spread the importance of funding public transit through public officials
• Co-founded Voices for Public Transportation, a coalition of community-based organizations and organized labor to work on creating equitable, green, and abundant public transportation for Northern California
• During COVID-19, public outreach efforts have been ever more focused on equity and inclusion, using multilingual and multicultural tools to make sure that “hard to reach” communities, sometimes called communities of concern, or priority communities, are engaged and at the center of public outreach campaigns
• With a year of public outreach during COVID-19 behind her, has developed tips and tricks for equitable public outreach during these isolated times
• As president of the Lower Haight Merchant & Neighbor Association, led the charge to engage community for safety meetings; held fundraisers for fire-displaced apartment dwellers to raise $50,000 for a permanent bronze statue in the neighborhood, and to create an ongoing thrice-yearly ArtWalk to brand a formerly unknown neighborhood, The Lower Haight
• M.B.A. in marketing; University of Oregon