Building a brand is about developing a message that resonates with your target audience, it’s about good storytelling, consistency and repetition. It’s one part inspiration and one part grit. And for me, it’s important to believe in the mission of the brand I’m building.
Heather Luca is a communications expert with over 20 years of experience helping mission-driven organization tell their stories and engage target audiences. Throughout her career, Ms. Luca has directed successful awareness and fundraising campaigns on issues ranging from the environment to poverty reduction.
Since joining Results for Development in 2016, Ms. Luca has led an institutional rebranding, including launching a new mission statement, organizational positioning and a new website. She has implemented an integrated marketing strategy driving a significant increased R4D’s visibility, thought leadership and engagement among key audiences — and helped solidify R4D’s reputation as a global organization that aims to transform global development and shift power to the communities we serve.
Ms. Luca also oversees internal communications and staff engagement at R4D, supporting a rapidly growing, diverse and globally dispersed team to feel connected to one another and R4D’s mission.
As a member of R4D’s Executive Team, she serves as the principal advisor to programmatic leadership on communications strategies to increase the impact and reach of R4D’s work in health, education and nutrition.
Before joining R4D, Ms. Luca led the creative services, marketing and online fundraising teams at Conservational International. In that role, she directed development and rollout of a new logo and website, along with the launch of the award-winning “Nature Is Speaking” campaign, which resulted in a measured increase in brand awareness for Conservation International. Ms. Luca also secured $1 million for conservation in partnership with HP, Inc., which agreed to donate one dollar for each use of the Twitter hashtag #NatureIsSpeaking. Prior to that, Ms. Luca was director of communications at the international development nonprofit ACDI/VOCA, where she led her first website redesign and completed several photography and storytelling assignments. She began her career in communications at World Learning.
Ms. Luca holds a bachelor’s in international affairs from Lafayette College. She loves to cook, travel and spend time with her husband and two teenage boys.
