Centering the people the campaign was about.
May 2020. Race and justice as national conversation. IBM launched a 1:1 matching campaign for anti-discrimination charities and asked its designers to carry it.
I led the campaign’s storytelling — amplifying voices from Black IBMers, visualizing the pledge as it grew, and building the chronicle that documented the commitment in real time.
June 2020. IBM’s response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd wasn’t a statement — it was a commitment. A seven-part personal pledge carried by IBMers in every time zone. A 1:1 donation match for anti-discrimination charities. $100M in technology and support to HBCUs. A four-pillar framework for structural change, co-created from inside the Black community at IBM.
The microsite was built to hold all of it honestly. At its center: Black IBMers who chose to speak on record, without a script, about what it actually felt like. The campaign, the numbers, the voices, the 2020 D&I Report. A record of a company that answered the moment.
Built with the people it was about — documented as it happened, preserved as it was.
The Emb(race) mark and its Pan-African flag symbolism embedded in the IBM logo — red, yellow, and green woven through the eight-bar stripes. A quiet, powerful statement that didn’t need to shout.
A 7-part pledge visualized as 8-second social stories, each part given its own graphic treatment for the feed. Every story resolves on the Emb(race) wordmark — its parentheses easing inward to embrace the word between them, the campaign’s name made literal in motion. Designed to be shared, screenshot, and reposted by IBMers across every channel.
A video series giving platform to personal stories of race from IBM employees — directed and edited to center the people telling the stories — their voices in front of the frame, IBM's logistics behind it.