Workshop | Non-Exploitative Communications

The way Public Services Agencies and non-profit organizations often market their work tends to rely on stories and experiences that don’t belong to them and/or don’t demonstrate their actual work. This presentation is an entry to a course about marketing ethically and responsibly without subjecting people to exploitation. We will think about how to zero in on our actual work and find the stories that are ours to tell and eliminate the tropes that contribute to disparate treatment in daily living.

Monica Foucher is the Associate Director of Public Relations for Home Forward, where she manages the agency’s image, through community relationship repair initiatives focused on racial justice and reparations, media relations, ethical and responsible use of image and story, updated branding, and more. Monica spent time as a writer, editor, film maker, artist manager, publicist, and media analyst, among a variety of other occupations in culture, entertainment, and art spaces. She is passionate about history and Black liberation and serves on the boards of Social Justice Fund NW and The Decarceration Collective. She completed the film program at Columbia College in Chicago and graduated from Portland State University. She plays banjo, piano, and ukulele decently enough, and is amazing at karaoke. Her main objective in life is to pet all of the dogs.