Cure Alzheimer’s Fund
When I joined Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, I quickly realized it was uncommon—in the best possible way.
The organization’s founders included venture capitalists: people who thought about risk, evidence, and return on investment as naturally as they thought about mission. That background had led them to a founding decision that set the organization apart from virtually every other nonprofit in disease research: the Board and Trustees would cover all operating costs, so that every dollar raised would go directly to research.
This was an extraordinary commitment. It was also a communications challenge of a particular kind. Donors were being asked to trust not just the mission, but a sophisticated funding philosophy—one that required real understanding of how research works, why a fully-funded operating model matters, and what it means when an organization can say, with complete honesty, that every dollar goes to the science.
I came into the organization prepared to shape and build its brand. I was not prepared for how completely the science would take hold of my imagination.
Understanding Alzheimer’s well enough to communicate it credibly—for researchers, for major philanthropists, for the general public, all at once—meant immersing myself in the biology, the clinical language, and the debates happening at the frontier of the field. A significant donor once told me that learning about the brain is like holding onto a greasy watermelon: just when you think you’ve grasped it, it slips away. That was exactly right. And the struggle to understand it made me better. To simplify something requires deep understanding. With a disease this complex, and stakes this high, genuine rigor is the only foundation for meaningful communication.
The strategic challenge was clear: differentiate a small organization in a crowded field, while earning the trust of audiences that ranged from world-class neuroscientists to first-time donors, patients, and their families.
Our answer was to bring humanity into the brand—warmth into what is too often presented as the cold realm of the science lab.
Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t just affect the person diagnosed. It impacts entire families and networks of caregivers, sometimes before a single symptom has been identified. That insight became the foundation of The Face of Alzheimer’s campaign: stunning portrait photography of people across unexpected ages and demographics, paired with facts that most audiences had never encountered. Not the familiar image of elderly patients—the faces of people experiencing the disease without warning, and without understanding why.
This work also included translating more than 100 peer-reviewed papers from respected scientific journals into language that general audiences could genuinely understand. These pieces chronicled the growing understanding of the disease’s underlying biology and the pathways toward potential therapies. For patients and families, they offered evidence that progress was real. For donors, they provided confidence that continued support was making a difference.
From that storytelling foundation, we built a comprehensive, multi-channel marketing and communications platform that included:
• A complete brand and website redesign
• Audience-specific print and digital publications
• A robust science-focused content strategy
• Email marketing and social media programs
• Videos highlighting the dedication of researchers
• A brand film that distilled a twenty-year journey into four compelling minutes
• The organization’s first public service announcement
• Integrated advertising across broadcast television, connected TV, radio, digital, and outdoor media
Every tactic served the same purpose: to celebrate the researchers, humanize the science without oversimplifying it, and create a sense of urgency grounded in hope, progress, and credibility.
Over the decade that I led marketing and communications, annual fundraising grew from $11 million to nearly $60 million.
Since its inception, the organization has invested $275 million in research. Every dollar Cure Alzheimer’s Fund put into the science generated an average of $7.80 in follow-on funding from the NIH.
Those numbers matter. But what I’m most proud of is something less measurable: we built a community of donors, researchers, and supporters who understood exactly what they were part of—and why.
There is a particular kind of work that changes you. This was that work.
I left Cure Alzheimer’s Fund not because I was finished, but because I wasn’t. The work of translating science—of finding the human meaning inside research that most people will never read, and making it matter to people who have the power to fund it—is work I am built for. And work the world still needs.