Engage recruits and partners with dedicated professionals and leading firms around the country to achieve client goals. Our ability to tap a nationwide network of exceptional talent, with each individual focused on delivering his or her own unique contribution to the larger effort, means that with Engage the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
Sydney Cook: Sydney is an attorney with experience in the private, public and non-profit sectors. With Engage, Sydney has conducted strategic evaluations and managed business projects for clients including the C.S. Mott Foundation and Avaya. Prior to Engage and her days as a commercial litigator, Sydney was a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice in the Honors Program of the Environment and Natural Resource Division where she represented numerous federal agencies defending federal takings claims, enforcing environmental and land use laws and negotiating multi-million dollar settlements. Before moving to Charleston, Sydney spent a significant part of her career in the western United States, where she clerked for the Honorable Tena Campbell on the United States District Court, District of Utah. Sydney received her law degree from the University of Utah, where she was Editor-in-Chief on the Utah Law Review, an M.S. from the University of Montana and a B.A. from Colby College.
Avery Gilbert: Avery brings to Engage ten years of experience in strategic advocacy including four years of multi-billion dollar litigation experience at a leading law firm in New York. At the Center for a Sustainable Economy, in Washington, DC, Avery surveyed political, legislative, advocacy and tax structures related to energy policy with a particular focus on dialogue between labor and environmental groups. Avery also analyzed the energy savings impacts of President Clinton’s Climate Change Tax Incentives and advocated for their passage. More recently, while at the Beldon Fund, Avery advanced the Fund’s mission to create political power through strategic state-based advocacy and alliances between health and environmental communities. Avery has most recently sharpened her elbows at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP, a top litigation firm in New York, litigating complex commercial disputes involving a wide range of antitrust, contract, intellectual property, and tort claims. Avery also brings to Engage experience with the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she helped craft a multi-state greenhouse gas litigation strategy.
Dashiell Flynn: Dashiell is a trained development economist with nine years of experience across government, research and management consulting. As a strategy and finance consultant, his work focuses on quantitative analysis, strategic planning and operating model development through the integration of subject matter expertise, organizational requirements and best practices. With Accenture his professional projects have ranged from developing a strategic plan and client engagement plan for a national education non-profit organization, to conducting the market assessment and offering requirements identification for Accenture to launch their Non-profit Group. Dashiell previously worked for the Social Science Research Council managing an academic panel evaluating the U.S. election process, and for the New York City Mayor’s Office developing and implementing policy and initiative responses to breakdowns in city service delivery. He holds a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Vassar College.
Anne Emerson: Anne joins Engage as an Emmy award-winning network producer and writer with 20 years of experience in the investigative news and documentary field. Her career includes time spent overseas as the Associate Bureau Producer for ABC News-Johannesburg during South Africa’s transition to democracy. She went on to become a producer for ABC News and The Discovery Channel in the United States where she won an Emmy award for her series documenting the trouble in our oceans. Anne has crisscrossed the country as a freelance field producer and news gatherer for most of the major network and cable channels reporting on a variety of stories, both in breaking live news and as features. In addition to her work in broadcast journalism, Anne handles copywriting for corporate clients. She works closely with her clients to create and deliver the voice of their brands on company websites, social networking sites, as well as through hard-copy collateral. Anne is also a founding partner of Kids’ Yoga Journey, a Charleston, SC- based company that integrates family wellbeing with current technology. Kids’ Yoga Journey created the first yoga iPad application designed specifically for children, now distributed across several digital platforms. Anne graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Stephanie Lucas: Stephanie is a research associate and writer for Engage. Working primarily in the corporate real estate world, she played a role in repositioning a distressed asset at Equity Office Properties and took part in the growth of Highwoods Properties from a regional office property owner to a NYSE-traded Real Estate Investment Trust. Stephanie grew up in southern California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and now resides in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina where she is an active volunteer, having served on various boards, at East Cooper Montessori Charter School. She fervently follows current national discussions of urban planning and redevelopment issues and economic, environmental, health care and education policy.
Tom Bradford: Tom is a communications specialist. He is a veteran broadcast journalist, having served in various positions for CBS for 27 years, 16 of them at CBS News in New York. At CBS News, Tom served as Director of Recruitment, Deputy Foreign Editor, and Senior Producer on the CBS Morning News before being appointed to create the overnight news broadcast, CBS News Up to the Minute. Through his consulting firm in Charleston, SC, he advises numerous organizations on media strategy and has taught seminars on broadcast communications. Tom also pursues a personal passion: smart urban planning with emphasis on mobility choices to encourage “green” progress and personal health. As such, he also serves as Director of Charleston Moves, an advocacy group pursuing those goals.
Stephanie Hunt: Stephanie brings expertise in writing, marketing and advocacy to Engage. A professional freelance writer and editor for the last 15 years, she publishes features, profiles and essays in a number of print and online media, and serves as contributing editor for Charleston Magazine, Charleston HOME, Skirt! and Literary Mama. Her corporate marketing and copywriting clients range from law firms to textile designers, and have included Bic, Mattel, 7-Up, Kiawah Island and Roper St. Francis Healthcare. A graduate of Duke University and Vanderbilt Divinity School, Stephanie stays engaged with educational policy at the state and local levels, and as a mother of three girls, is an advocate for women’s issues. She currently chairs the Women’s and Gender Studies Advisory Board at the College of Charleston, and is past-president of the historic Circular Congregational Church in Charleston.
Lydia Poon: Lydia is a writer, researcher, and analyst. She has worked in all three sectors–government, business, and nonprofit–and her longstanding interest in efficient management practices across these sectors led her to obtain an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Prior to this, Lydia was a senior manager at the Center for American Progress, a preeminent policy and communications think tank, where she drove the creation of systems that efficiently allocated resources for product launches and advocacy campaigns. Motivated by her conviction for creating positive social impact, she has held leadership roles in capacity-building organizations–first as a board member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and then as co-chair of Yale’s graduate chapter of Net Impact. She was an editor of presidential documents at the National Archives and is currently a finance editor for an online media firm. Lydia is based in Reno, Nevada.
