With close to 20 years of in-depth experience working on issues of children and families, Forthright Advising’s founder Katie Test Davis established a public relations and marketing firm driven by a love of kids, and laser focused on their success. Our all-remote team works exclusively with child and family focused organizations and the most innovative public school districts across the country.
Our approach
Our commitments
our methodology
We believe that people matter most – ours, yours and the people we work alongside in the communities we serve. Great relationships are at the heart of successful strategic communications, and we build ours with kindness, empathy, trust and respect.
Forthright believes in creating – and maintaining – open spaces where everyone belongs. Come as you are, work the way you like and have a real say. Simple as that.
We seek to understand and commit to collaboration. We always ask “why” and care about the big picture. During a project, we expect things will change and priorities will shift. We respond positively and share workable solutions.
We are passionate about the causes we work for, driven by a collective vision of a brighter future. We like to do good, and we always have fun along the way.
Our recommendations are steeped in research, and we love to measure our results. We give feedback and create our recommendations based on the latest research on your issues and industry trends, knowing that an informed solution serves our clients best.
We believe clarity is kindness, and we aren’t yes people. At all levels, we are committed to asking for and receiving honest, gracious, transparent and candid feedback. When someone says jump, we ask if they’ve considered skipping, running or leaping instead, just to make sure we’re choosing the best option together.
We do what we say we’re going to do, and we do it really well. We provide high-quality services to our clients, ensuring that we meet or exceed our partners’ expectations.
Our special sauce is secret (our lawyer demands it), but here’s what we can tell you: We start every project by asking three critical questions designed to discover what success looks like, who we want to reach, and what we want them to know, do or think differently.
From there, we bring in the science. Because our team specializes in children, families and education, we know our stuff. We can talk all day to our clients about ADMs, ECE, SEL, the Family First Prevention Services Act, Paid Sick Leave and more…then we can translate all of that complexity into accessible and powerful messaging that works for your audiences.
We know how to strip the jargon when it becomes acronym soup. We know how to reach parents to meet them where they are, and tap into their values with messaging. We cut through the noise to get the right journalists your news. We ensure policy makers have what they need to make the right choices.
And when we’ve completed our projects together, our clients have new skills and tools they can implement every day moving forward.
Looking to dig deeper into our methodology? Visit our methodology page here.
forth·right /ˈfôrTHˌrīt/ adjective
(of a person or their manner or speech) direct and outspoken; straightforward and honest.
synonyms: frank, straightforward, candid, open, sincere, straight to the point, no-nonsense
ARCHAIC
proceeding directly forward.
