Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
Designing Tomorrow explores a new playbook for modern social impact leaders and brands to reach their true impact potential.
Why do some social impact brands thrive, while so many others fail to get traction, build support for their cause, and make meaningful progress? Imagine your impact with truly sustainable revenue and resources. With deeper community engagement and relationships. With more influence in your social impact category.
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, each episode dives into the strategies, mindsets, and behaviors top social impact brands use to play and win in the attention economy. Go beyond high-level concepts to specific tools and tactics you can use today.
Watch on YouTube or listen to new episodes each Tuesday.
Let’s design a better tomorrow, together.
Designing Tomorrow is a Cosmic Production. Learn more at https://designbycosmic.com/
Designing Tomorrow is a registered trademark of Design By Cosmic, Inc.
Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
What Would Have to Be True?
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Sarah Newkirk became executive director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County in the middle of a capital campaign, the same week Jonathan Hicken took over at the Seymour Center. Five years later, she's landed a $15 million farmland deal, a wildlife crossing Caltrans is now replicating statewide, and a strategic plan built around one question: what would have to be true for this to work? She and Eric talk relationships, risk, and why joy is the real return on conservation work.
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:30] Coming in as the new ED mid-capital-campaign, the same week Jonathan started at the Seymour Center
[00:06:30] Beach Ranch: taking flood-prone farmland out of production to let marshland move inland
[00:07:30] Retiring 47-year-old branding and finally owning the "conservation incubator" identity
[00:09:30] Inside the Highway 17 wildlife crossing, now a model Caltrans is replicating statewide
[00:16:00] The Land Trust's three beneficiaries: wildlife, working agriculture, and people, together
[00:26:00] The "what would have to be true" method that turned a twice-failed ballot measure into Measure Q
Notable Quotes:
Sarah Newkirk [00:28:00]: "We made a list of what had to be true, and we made those things true."
Sarah Newkirk [00:39:15]: "When you provide this kind of conservation work to the broader public, the public loves it, and therefore they love you. That is a beautiful, virtuous cycle."
Eric Ressler [00:39:30]: "I love that the answer is joy. I think we need a lot more joy in how this work happens."
Resources & Links:
- Land Trust of Santa Cruz County — landtrustsantacruz.org
- Highway 17 Wildlife Crossing — landtrustsantacruz.org/protected-areas/highway-17-wildlife-crossing/
- Beach Ranch wetland restoration — hilltromper.com/article/wetland-restoration-beach-ranch-benefits-nature-wildlife-and-people
- Learning the Land podcast — landtrustsantacruz.org/podcast/
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.
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