Margolis Healy

Marketing and Public Relations Consultant

Engagement Overview

I served as the in-house marketing and communications consultant during Margolis Healy's period of high growth, supporting the company's core consulting practice and its start-up venture, Social Sentinel. I led brand management and narrative storytelling, managed external design and web development vendors, and advised firm leadership on public positioning during a period of intense national scrutiny of campus Title IX practices and Clery Act reporting.

Featured Project:
Campus Safety Survey

A National Campus Safety Survey

I led the firm's 2015 Campus Safety Survey, rebuilding and significantly scaling up a smaller study the company had first run in 2010. I redesigned the questionnaire, configured and managed the study in SurveyMonkey, wrote the outreach campaign, and partnered with professional associations to drive response from campus safety officials and senior leadership nationwide, to achieve 513 respondents. I led the data analysis and co-authored the final report with Margolis Healy's Vice President of Operations. The findings, including that more than a quarter of U.S. campuses had never run an active shooter drill — most citing budget constraints, earned coverage across four national outlets, including USA Today, Security Magazine, and SecurityInfoWatch. The report went on to be cited in peer-reviewed research, a federal Bureau of Justice Assistance publication, and a U.S. Department of Education-funded digest.

Survey details and outcomes

The survey ran ~5.5 weeks starting April 2015 and included a total of 513 respondents (campus safety officials 51%, other campus officials incl. Title IX/Clery coordinators 21.5%, senior leadership 11.9%). Five topic areas were covered: emergency management, campus public safety, regulatory compliance (Title IX/Clery), study abroad safety, and social media monitoring.

Key findings:

25.4% of respondents had never conducted an active shooter drill — top reason cited: budget constraints
Only 54.7% had conducted a comprehensive hazard/vulnerability assessment; 26.5% never had
31% have no staff dedicated to emergency preparedness (41.2% at two-year institutions)
56.8% concerned about Title IX violations at their institution (65.9% among leadership)
63.2% monitor social media around campus, but 67.7% of those do it manually

Impact:

Featured outlet coverage included: USA Today College, Security Magazine, SecurityInfoWatch.com, and Campus Safety Magazine (suspended in 2026).
Trade coverage and citations: ASIS Security Management Magazine, "SM Online;" NCSSLE Higher Education e-Digest, Vol. 4 Issue 2 (U.S. Dept. of Education-funded); Journal of Emergency Management (peer-reviewed) — cited in two articles: Murphy & Lichtveld, Vol. 16 No. 2 (2018); Murphy, Brown, Shankar & Lichtveld, Vol. 17 No. 3 (2019); Bureau of Justice Assistance publication, "Defining the Value of Campus Emergency Management Programs to Communities" (NCCPS, March 2019) — cites specific survey stats twice.

Range of Work

Additional work pieces

The following are a few examples of work from my multi-year engagement, which also included conducting a full business development and marketing audit identifying gaps in the firm's web presence, SEO, content strategy, and PR, which informed the firm's Q4 2015 and 2016 strategic priorities.

Storytelling

A narrative case study tracing a six-year client relationship with Touro College, as they transformed from an institution with no emergency management program to one recognized by NYC Emergency Management for its preparedness work. I wrote the piece in a storytelling voice to show prospective clients what a long-term partnership with the firm could look like.

Conference proposals

Two conference proposals submitted and accepted. The first, for NASPA's 2016 Violence Prevention Conference, focused on trauma-informed sexual assault investigation and adjudication, and was developed in consultation with the presenting experts. It included content from a curriculum piloted nationwide under the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault's mandate to the National Center for Campus Public Safety.

The second was a conference proposal for the National Association of Branch Campus Administrators (NABCA) on navigating Title IX and Clery Act compliance across branch campuses, developed collaboratively with the firm's subject-matter experts to meet the association's submission requirements and maximize its chances of acceptance.

Services positioning and descriptions

This is a sample of copy was created for the Margolis Healy website and potential collateral materials that were under consideration at the time. Each vertical director provided technical specs or answered specific questions that needed clarification.