Ebony Carter
Strategic Communications Executive · Founder, Strategy Lab Collective
Lithonia, GA connect@strategylabcollective.co strategylabcollective.co LinkedIn
The long way.
Eight stops across two decades, three sectors, and four languages — toward the lab built once the pattern could no longer be un-seen.
Four moments. The same thing seen — first read, then at scale, then on every continent, then named.
Field · Where it started
Fort Peck Reservation
Montana
A sophomore American Literature course turned out to be Native American Literature — and it blew my mind. I moved to Montana to live and work near Native American communities, so the media wouldn’t be the one dictating the lifestyle.
Philadelphia · First read
Emergency Response Coordinator
American Red Cross
Philadelphia, PA
Fall 2008 — my first job out east. A front-row seat into the realities of racial disparity in the city. A second role around the same time gave me the other half: how white-led nonprofits operate in Black and other communities of color — extracting resources and turning them into mechanisms to monetize. That stayed with me. The pattern was already visible, even before I had the language for it.
Education
MA, Eastern European Studies
La Salle University
Philadelphia, PA
The road I’d been on since age nine — Rocky IV the first draw. The interest stayed through the BA in 2006, through Montana, through Philadelphia — with residual fear and concerns, and no clear way in. At a career crossroad I applied to La Salle’s Eastern European Studies program and got in. Russian, finally — then the start of Belarusian studies. The first read on what gets translated, and what doesn’t.
Field · Peace Corps
Community Health Volunteer
U.S. Peace Corps
Armenia
La Salle had a handful of Armenian classmates who pointed the way. I’d wanted to live and work in a republic that had once been part of the Soviet Union. Two years designing community-based public health programs alongside local government, community leaders, and international development partners — Armenian and Russian, daily.
Teaching · The transfer
ESL Instructor
Interactive College of Technology
Atlanta, GA
Two years teaching adult learners — immigrants, refugees, international students — grammar, workplace English, pronunciation, conversational fluency, and the mentoring that carried students into higher ed and jobs. Daily proof that different people learn, and perform, under different conditions — and that handing someone the means of being heard is capacity they keep.
Public health communications
Senior Communications Specialist & Writer
Strategic Innovative Solutions / GDIT — CDC contractor
Atlanta, GA
Adaptive communication strategies for a federally mandated public health transformation reaching 3.5 million Americans annually. Partner toolkits across 35 state and local health departments, embedding communication capacity directly into the orgs doing the work on the ground.
The first time the pattern was visible at scale.
Federal policy communications
Senior Team Lead, Global Labor Affairs Engagement
ICF — U.S. Department of Labor, ILAB
Remote · 131 countries
Narrative steward across 131 countries — sites where the question was never whether harm was happening, only whether it would be made legible. Editorial lead on the congressionally mandated Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.
The pattern was identical on every continent.
Founder
Director of Communications & Founder
Strategy Lab Collective
Atlanta, GA
The lab built once the pattern could no longer be un-seen. With Black-led and community-rooted organizations — never for them — diagnosing the structural conditions that produce the silence and rebuilding the infrastructure underneath.
Core Competencies
Communication Infrastructure Design · Organizational Transformation · Thought Leadership and Research · Federal Policy Communications · Cross-Cultural Stakeholder Engagement · Change Management · Narrative Architecture · Editorial Strategy and Brand Standards · Crisis Communications
Education
Philadelphia, PA
Languages