In October the ARTT project welcomed four new members to our team. That means several fresh new faces at our staff meetings – yay! – as well as more opportunities to expand how ARTT supports health communicators, educators, and other responders like you who work to build trust and keep local, online communities better informed. So, with a drumroll… please welcome Elizabeth, Endalk, Ross, and Jordan!
Elizabeth joins ARTT with a PhD in social psychology and a background in researching why people believe and share information online. Here at ARTT, she’s on a mission to discover what our users want from our tool and how we can best measure if the tool is working. When Elizabeth is not thinking about ARTT, you can find her scuba diving through sunken airplanes (just kidding – she only did that once, but it’s too cool to leave out).
Endalk is interested in fostering meaningful connections and understanding the nuances of human interactions. Endalk has followed this thread throughout his career and wound up here at ARTT, where he’s refining our tool’s Tip Library – “tips” are basically our actionable, research-based “response modes” or recommendations for how to build trust around hot-button issues – for our target audience. Endalk is also an avid soccer fan and supports Arsenal and Barcelona.
Ross has an academic background in history and international affairs and a persistent interest in the role of technology’s ability to shape people’s behavior. He’s working on the analysis side of the ARTT Guide – the component of our tool that lets users understand more about a post they might be trying to respond to, and helps the guide come up with recommendations for how to respond – as well as building out an educational curriculum for people wanting to learn more about how to have more productive conversations online. Ross says he likes to sample ‘extraordinary’ or noteworthy food wherever he travels – most recently, andouille, or pig intestine, while visiting Paris.
Finally, I’d like to introduce… me, Jordan Castelloe, ARTT Community Coordinator. At ARTT, we know that health educators and other online responders need more than a software tool – you all need a sense of connection to each other and to the difficult work of building trust. Hailing from a background in tech and economic development, I’m here to figure out exactly what that looks like and make it happen. I’m also the team’s resident Muppet Expert (every project needs one), with a weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of obscure Muppet lore. I’m still mourning the fact that Gonzo’s memoir, ‘The’ is my Middle Name, has never been published.
Although we new folks bring a vast range of experience to the project, we all have one thing in common: We want to better understand and help ARTT users like you have better trust-building conversations and help you answer the question: “What can I say and how do I say it?”
This work is especially important as we continue through this phase of the ARTT project and focus on finding solutions for our core audience. Is there anything you think they should consider?
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our newsletter!
