Ava Community Energy

Dan led Ava's website development and managed the site post-launch, migrating it across Forestry, Sanity, and WordPress CMS platforms along the way. He led the site revamp when the agency rebranded (formerly East Bay Community Energy) and managed the ongoing evolution of Ava's web presence as its program portfolio grew. The 2024 website redesign won Best Environmental & Sustainability Web Design at the Netty Awards.

As a regulated electricity provider, Ava was required to send information to all customers at least twice annually, in addition to ongoing brand-building and call-to-action communications. Dan sent about 2 million messages per year to customers, primarily by email, many mass-customized. Of California's 25 Community Choice Aggregators, Dan pioneered a mass-customized approach to the annual Power Content Label mailer — a mini annual report segmented by city and by which type of electricity service each customer was on.

As a public agency, Ava strives to engage every customer in its jurisdiction, which meant preparing marketing collateral that was easy to understand across diverse audiences in multiple languages. Beyond brochures and one-pagers, Dan developed explainer videos, branded swag, and segmented content — including a toolkit for businesses and a guide for seniors.

Dan led Ava's social media efforts for most of his tenure — creating organic and paid content, scheduling on native tools and Hootsuite, coordinating with designers, running ad campaigns, serving as the primary voice of Ava in online engagement, and evolving to a team approach as the agency grew. Dan crafted Ava's voice as trusted, local, and accessible, often posting locally-recognizable visual content and engaging directly with commenters.