In 2018, the Director of PR for the Committee for Children (CFC) approached me with an annual project called “Ask Our Expert”. The project involved interviewing experts in social-emotional learning (SEL) and having the copywriter on my team write out a narrative of the interview. The final document was then released as a downloadable PDF with all the interviews together. However, the Director was looking to bring more attention to the PDF and spread the knowledge of the benefits behind SEL. She asked for my advice on how to improve the design and concept to attract more users.

Upon reviewing the project, I noticed that while the content was great, the PDF was text-heavy and lacked interesting graphics. I suggested that we create a podcast instead, since we were already interviewing the experts. This would allow the user to listen to the expert personally, bringing in the emotional part of SEL. While the Director argued that our audience didn't need stronger design and was more interested in the content, I believed that everyone is attracted to strong design, and it simply strengthens the content.

To create the podcast, we needed to concept it, design it, host it, and record it. It was a lot of upfront work, but I knew it would save time in the long run. We managed to bring everything together within a three-month timeline from the initial meeting, including creating a dynamic website to host the podcast that could be edited by someone without dev experience, deciding on a name for the podcast, creating a logo and brand standards, and developing social media and branded graphics.

Thus, the “Grow Kinder Podcast” was born! The podcast was launched in January of 2019 and now has over 30 episodes. It has been successful in spreading the knowledge of the benefits behind SEL and even paved the way for another CFC podcast called the “Imagine Neighborhood”, which is seeing even more success. To hear the podcast, please go to growkinderpodcast.org.