Michaela Hayes
Principal
Hayes Marketing & Communications
Personal Website: HayesMarcom.com

Michaela Hayes is Principal of Hayes Marketing & Communications. She has an extensive background in market research, branding, marketing, communications, and strategic planning and strategy formation. She has held manager and director-level positions of marketing, market research, and strategic planning with several organizations (including Blue Shield of California and Healthtrac, Inc.), as well as senior and managing consultant positions with national consulting firms (including KPMG, The MEDSTAT Group, and La Piana Associates, Inc.). She began her career at the Berkeley Chapter of the American Red Cross where she served as Assistant Director of Community Programs; the organization's services included a mental health day treatment program and programs for the homebound elderly.

Michaela's professional work spans the nonprofit, business, and government sectors, and includes organizations focused on health care, mental health, social services, children and youth, seniors, the environment, and education. She has designed and conducted innumerable research projects on behalf of clients who seek to better understand their markets and market trends, market position, competition, and customer/client needs and concerns. She advises these organizations on how to use this information to make better decisions and develop more effective strategies to achieve their missions and strategic goals. She also helps organizations develop their own in-house research, marketing, and communications functions.

For seven years prior to starting Hayes Marketing & Communications in early 2008, Michaela was a senior consultant with La Piana Associates, Inc., a management consulting firm serving the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. She was the Project Director for La Piana's Strategy Formation initiative, a four-year foundation-funded initiative focused on developing processes and tools, many adapted from the business sector, to assist nonprofits in developing their capacity for strategic thinking and acting. Michaela contributed to David La Piana's recently-released book, The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a Rapid-Response World, which documents the findings of the initiative and the process and tools that were developed.

Michaela is also a contributing author of David La Piana's book, Play to Win: the Nonprofit Guide to Competitive Strategy, which won a Terry McAdam Nonprofit Book of the Year honorable mention award. Additionally, she was a co-author of La Piana Associates' book: The Nonprofit Mergers Workbook, Part II: Unifying the Organization after a Merger (2004). She has published many journal articles on strategy, marketing, and market research, and is the author of Focus Group Essentials: Increase the Effectiveness of Your Communications and Their Contributions to the Bottom Line, published by the International Association of Business Communicators. She is currently working on a book of practical tools for market researchers and one on the use of storytelling in organizational communications.

Michaela has served as a board member and volunteer for several nonprofit organizations. She is active in professional organizations including the International Association of Business Communicators where she serves as President on the Board of the San Francisco Chapter and on the international organization's Task Force on Social Responsibility. Additionally, Michaela is instructor of the Market Research course for San Francisco State University's Integrated Marketing Program.

Michaela received a Master's degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan and a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, she has a Certificate in Gerontology from the University of Michigan.