Expanding Access to School-Based Youth Mental Health Partnerships with TRAILS
Our Challenge
TRAILS—Transforming Research into Action to Improve the Lives of Students—engaged Purple Haus during a critical moment of organizational transition. With leadership roles unfilled and core functions in flux, they needed expert support to strengthen communications, align internal teams, and bring structure to a growing external affairs function. Our charge was to establish consistent messaging, smarter systems, and organizational clarity to support future growth.
Our Approach
Over a six-month engagement, Danielle Kristine Toussaint served as TRAILS’ fractional Chief External Affairs Officer, stepping into a key executive leadership role across brand, communications, and team strategy.
Conducted a full audit of brand positioning, communications systems, and team structure, resulting in updated role descriptions and a revised org chart to clarify ownership and right-size workloads.
Supported marketing, communications, and development leads with short- and long-term planning.
Designed and facilitated a series of strategy workshops and all-team presentations to align internal stakeholders and inform a cohesive brand refresh.
Liaised with external partners, internal working groups, and executive leadership to provide accountability and structure to get the brand refresh back on track.
Our Impact
Our partnership with TRAILS evolved their communication and brand messaging strategy, setting them up for future growth as they prepared to scale up their technology development, field-building, and external engagement efforts, resulting in:
Unified brand messaging that clearly and succinctly communicated their unique value, approach, and vision for growth.
Internal alignment and buy-in from leadership and staff for strategic pivots and integrating new brand language into their external communications.
Smoother operating conditions for the external creative strategy, design, and development teams that enabled the website to launch on time.
Improved executive communications and increased organizational trust through more transparent engagement and opportunities for feedback.
Work With Us
Inspired by our work? We’d love to hear from you—let’s explore what’s possible.
