REAL WORK.
LASTING IMPACT.
APPROPRIATIONS & BUDGET
The Long Game on Infrastructure
Sustained state funding for a regional flood protection project
In coastal Louisiana, flood protection takes decades to build, but budgets are written one year at a time. For a regional levee system protecting tens of thousands of residents, the real danger wasn't losing a vote. It was being quietly left out of the budget in a lean year and never getting back in.
We treated the funding as a permanent campaign rather than an annual request. Across nearly a decade of sessions, several budget climates, and more than one administration, we kept the project in front of appropriators and moving through the capital outlay process. Each year's request built on the last, so legislators saw progress rather than a recurring ask. The project secured state funding in every cycle of that stretch, many millions of dollars in total, and construction kept moving while other projects stalled.
First Ask, Funded
A first-time state appropriation for a community health nonprofit
This organization provides care that no other part of the health system covers, and it had never asked the state for support. It had no relationships with the committees that write the budget.
We focused on the supplemental appropriations bill. That bill moves fast, late in session, and largely on trust. We made the case to appropriators in terms they already cared about: patients in their own districts, and care that keeps families out of costlier settings. The request was ready the moment the bill opened. The organization secured a six-figure appropriation in its first session seeking state support.
Capital Outlay, Start to Finish
Full-cycle capital outlay and Bond Commission representation for a community nonprofit
Capital outlay is Louisiana's most technical budget process. A project has to be requested, placed in HB2, assigned a priority, cleared by the Bond Commission, and actually funded. Plenty of nonprofits win the first step and never see a dollar, because nobody follows the project through the rest.
We structured the engagement as a retainer spanning two budget years, covering the request, the session, and the Bond Commission meetings that follow, where projects quietly advance or stall. The client had one point of accountability at every stage instead of hiring help one session at a time.
The Money After the Vote
Moving appropriated dollars through agencies
An appropriation is a promise, not a check. Some of our most valuable work happens after the Governor signs the budget: tracking funds through agency processes, getting answers on how an agency is administering a program, and clearing the administrative bottlenecks that can hold an appropriation for months. Our relationships with legislative leadership and agency heads let us resolve those problems quickly and directly. The work spans healthcare, education, and energy, and includes routing federal dollars to clients through state channels.
CAMPAIGNS
Repealing a Jim Crow–Era Law at the Ballot Box
Statewide constitutional amendment campaign
For more than a century, Louisiana law carried a criminal justice rule written specifically to dilute the voice of Black citizens. Voters had one cycle to remove it from the constitution, and they had to do it in one of the most conservative states in the country.
We built a coalition that refused to let the issue become partisan. Progressive advocates, conservative policy voices, faith leaders, and law enforcement all delivered the same message: this was a fairness principle, not a left or right one. The amendment passed decisively and carried parishes that had never backed a criminal justice reform.
Making an Invisible Office Matter
Re-election campaign for a statewide utility regulator in a 24-parish district
Utility regulators are among the least visible officials on a Louisiana ballot, even though they decide what families pay to keep the lights on. This district was larger than some states and politically mixed, and most voters had no reason to know who represented them.
The strategy made the office concrete: every message came back to the monthly bill and who was accountable for it. We built the field and media plan parish by parish rather than treating the district as a single market. The incumbent kept the seat.
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
Leading With the Governing Body
Member communications for a sovereign tribal government during a major capital project
When internal financial projections about a large construction project reached the press, a tribal government faced two audiences at once: reporters looking for a crisis, and citizens who deserved the truth from their own leaders first.
We built the response around a distinction that most coverage missed: the elected governing body is separate from the enterprise it oversees, and that body answers to its citizens. Rather than a defensive crisis document, the community presentation continued the government's regular reporting to its members, with figures reconciled against prior public commitments so no number contradicted an earlier one. Longer term, we are building direct-to-member communications infrastructure, a digital newsletter with a print companion, under the government's own ownership, so citizen data remains sovereign property and leaders never again have to learn what their members are hearing from the newspaper.
POLICY & ADVOCACY
Research That Holds Up on the Floor
Criminal justice legislative advocacy for national and Louisiana-based organizations
Criminal justice reform in Louisiana is usually fought on the other side's terms, under a "public safety" framing that rarely has to account for its costs. For national research organizations and in-state legal advocates, we produce the documents that change that framing.
That work includes floor notes drafted and delivered the same day a bill hits the calendar, session wrap reports that set the legislature's claims against the fiscal cost of incarceration and the record uncovered through public records enforcement, and confidential strategic plans for multi-year efforts on post-conviction relief. Each document is written to be used on the floor, in the press, and in the next session's strategy.