breaking down complex social issues into compact, accessible briefs

The Challenge

Law reviews and business periodicals have been standard for years, but newer fields like social innovation haven’t had a similar resource. Until we set out to make one. Luckily, BYU houses the largest university-run social innovation center in the world. Myself and other interested individuals from the Ballard Center formed the pioneering team.

The Process

We brainstormed which elements would be simple, thorough, and flexible enough to become a highly-trusted academic source that could also be read by audiences like middle-school aged children. After multiple rounds of iteration, we settled on the following key elements:

• contributing factors

• consequences

• practices

  • description

  • impacts

  • gaps

• key takeaways

To prototype these elements and the brief forming process, each of us selected a topic and began writing a brief.

My topic was inspired by prior travels to India and my fierce belief that lifting up women accelerates progress across the board. The previous summer I had traveled to India with a humanitarian group where we partnered with a local non-profit to build self-sustaining latrines, provide english lessons, create a fundraising campaign, and offer togetherness at a leper colony.

I poured myself into research—filtering through complex, international sources—simultaneously parsing interconnected factors as well as connecting the dots. We met as a team regularly to share our learnings of the process.

To ensure execution of an accessible voice, we paired up as editing partners.

The Result

With final briefs in hand, the website was structured and published. Since then, thousands have accessed our briefs and students continue to contribute—growing their social analysis skills.

Access my published papers here and here!