Tag: Chief of Staff, Alex Steffen

Alison supported Alex Steffen, a planetary futurist and climate change focused writer and speaker, for almost three years (ending in early 2017). In this role, she drafted budgets, timelines, databases, and promotional materials. She oversaw all operations, administrative concerns, events and engagements.

The Nearly Now

Alison Cantor

The Nearly Now is a subscription based “anticipatory journalism” project written by Alex Steffen. Alex describes it as “a newsletter of provocative and compelling stories from the year 2025 — stories about people fighting for a better world, on a planet slipping into crisis.”

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Working as Alex’s Chief of Staff, I helped lay the groundwork for this project. I fine tuned the concept and brainstormed story ideas. I also drafted the logo, based on Alex’s idea, and then contracted a designer on Fivrr to perfect it. I created matching imagery for social media, and used Medium to build the project’s landing page. I spoke with with Medium’s product team to learn more about their membership program and researched the alternatives for subscriber payments before deciding to go with MailChimp in conjunction with Campaignzee.

Alex and I launched the project in late January, 2017, and he’s continued writing on this platform and building his audience of subscribers ever since.

The Heroic Future

Alison Cantor

In 2016, Alex Steffen and I produced a three-night talk series called The Heroic Future. The talks were filmed and later edited into a single video for general audiences. 

We successfully crowdfunded the project with a Kickstarter that generated more than $75,000. With Alex’s voiceover and some creative direction, I created the Kickstarter’s promotional video. I also edited the page content, gathered press mentions, and followed up on backer leads. Check out the page here and watch the video below.

Once the series was funded, I shifted my focus to planning and producing the three nights by zeroing in on the following tasks:

  • securing a venue
  • hiring a film crew
  • renting equipment
  • ensuring venue compliance
  • recruiting volunteers
  • designing programs
  • selling additional tickets
  • creating a scholarship ticket ticket program and offering tickets to applicants

By managing all these details, I enabled Alex to focus almost exclusively on content. The three nights ran smoothly and brought together hundreds of attendees. 

After the final curtain, I again shifted my focus, this time to working with a professional video editor to cut the six hours of raw footage from the series into something digestible for a general audience. I contracted this editor for the project, and worked with Alex to select highlights from the three nights and slice them into a cohesive flow. The resulting video can be found here.