Carimah Townes

Carimah Townes, Associate for Social Media Strategies, is founder of the Black woman owned and led communications firm, Brighter Sun, based in Los Angeles, California. Her mission is to help changemakers transform and empower their communities by building a strong digital presence, prioritizing Black and other historically marginalized groups. She works closely with clients to identify and share compelling stories that will elevate their brands and inspire action.

Carimah has become expert at assessing the purpose and goal(s) of a client's digital footprint to develop content strategies that reflect their brand and advance their organizational goals. She helps clients identify and understand their target audiences and leverage the right platforms to reach and engagement them, and them recommends the types of content to prioritize.
She advises on content marketing for audience growth and engagement across digital platforms, and then devises and executes digital campaign strategies, producing campaign collateral and collecting the data needed to update strategies to fulfill campaign goals.

Prior to entering the world of digital strategy and content development, Carimah covered the school-to-prison pipeline, policing, and mass incarceration as a criminal justice reporter. Her work was featured in Slate, The Appeal, ThinkProgress, and The Root. She later pivoted to a career in communications, working closely with LGBTQ+ youth leaders at GSA Network before launching her own digital strategy and content creation business, Brighter Sun Media.

Experience Highlights:

• As digital strategist at GSA Network, she developed an executive a multi-platform communications campaign for national GSA registration that engaged student leaders, school advisors, and organizational partners via social media and email. She also used social media to engage partner organizations to join GSA Network’s race and gender justice campaigns.

• Planned a robust social media, email, and traditional marketing campaign to promote a New York City government-run program and recruit youth participants across the city; conducted email and SMS outreach to assemble focus groups of current youth and adult program participants to develop the communications strategy; co-facilitated the focus groups; authored an exhaustive strategy guide with step-by-step instructions for rollout; designed 60 original graphics for program promotion and audience engagement.

• Crafted email toolkits for national sports organizations to educate their members about historically marginalized communities during heritage months (e.g. Black History Month, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Pride Month) and provide concrete ways to support those communities in and around sports.

• Launched a 3-month Instagram and email campaign to promote a virtual exhibit of Black artists; designed the campaign's branding; built and implemented an editorial calendar to showcase the featured artists' paintings and personal stories, including interviews and educational materials to expand on their subject matter; integrated Black art history to position artists as part of a long line of prolific creators.