Project Title:
Stay Ready Foundation
A Scalable Model for Equity-Centered Emergency Preparedness and Community Resilience
The Context
In response to widening gaps in emergency preparedness for high-poverty communities in East Oakland, the Stay Ready Foundation was developed as a narrative-driven initiative to close systemic response disparities, foster agency, and elevate localized education and resilience. Designed as a public-private collaboration, the foundation engaged government agencies, health systems, and grassroots leaders to address social determinants of health and inequities in public safety and crisis response infrastructure.
Bringing together over 25 partners—including FEMA, the American Heart Association, WIC, and local farmers market coalitions—you led the strategy, production, and communications framework for a full-scale community activation at Eastmont Center. As founder and lead strategist, I oversaw content development, PR outreach, site coordination, entertainment logistics, and interagency stakeholder management. I aligned messaging with data from Alameda County’s Health Data Profile, addressing chronic disease, food scarcity, youth incarceration, mental health gaps, and systemic inequity.
The strategy included neighborhood-specific risk data visualization, CPR training activations, a culturally rooted vendor strategy, youth and toddler education modules, and content pillars including maternal health, reentry services, and wildfire preparedness. Media engagement paired grassroots voice amplification with coverage outreach, integrating visibility for both local voices and national partners. My role bridged narrative design with operational logistics to ensure relevance, impact, and continuity beyond the event.
The Challenge
The Approach
Oakland’s historically under-resourced neighborhoods face dramatically higher mortality rates, food insecurity, education gaps, and limited access to emergency resources. Black and Latino residents in these communities are disproportionately affected by preventable emergencies—from wildfires and public utility shutdowns to mental health crises and cardiac arrest, where data shows a 26–37% lower likelihood of receiving life-saving interventions like CPR. The need wasn’t just to host an event—it was to design an ecosystem that aligned messaging, support systems, and trusted messengers to activate community preparedness and long-term advocacy.
The Impact
The Stay Ready Foundation didn’t just deliver emergency preparedness messaging—it served as a blueprint for scalable, equity-centered engagement. By mobilizing over 25 partners, including FEMA, public health agencies, and grassroots organizations, the initiative brought together traditionally siloed institutions to co-deliver culturally responsive content. This catalyzed ongoing investment in bilingual, trauma-informed outreach across the Bay Area, with several partner agencies integrating the Stay Ready model into their outreach frameworks.
The campaign reached over 7,000 residents, equipping vulnerable communities with tools for crisis response. More importantly, it reshaped how public institutions collaborate with the people they serve, building long-term trust, capacity, and a replicable model for future cross-sector initiatives.