Cecilia Laiché Communications Officer

By Adriana Godoy Leiss

The goal of amplifying the voice of grantees is a prominent theme that emerges when one talks to a member of the TCWF communications team about the Foundation’s storytelling tradition.

“Coming from a community-based nonprofit, I appreciate that the focus of the Foundation’s communications is on the grantees,” said Cecilia Laiché, a communications officer at TCWF, who will mark her 10th year at the Foundation this July. “It’s about putting credit where credit is due.”

While Laiché previously worked for 11 years with three health-focused nonprofit organizations in fund and project development, a career in the nonprofit sector wasn’t always her plan.

She studied drama at the Juilliard School in New York and later arrived in Los Angeles with plans to pursue a career in acting.

“When I first came out here I was a “wactress” – an aspiring actress working as a waitress,” Laiché said humorously. But an emerging interest in nonprofit work was cemented at the Scott Newman Center, the drug abuse prevention foundation established by actor Paul Newman and his family. Later, she worked at the Los Angeles Alliance for a Drug Free Community and at the Saban Free Clinic (formerly Los Angeles Free Clinic).

“I developed my skills over that time as a fundraiser and honestly, the work was challenging yet very rewarding,” Laiché said. “I’d see patients and youth who were benefiting every day.” Working at organizations funded by TCWF, she admired its approach of using media and communications strategically and its storytelling to add value to its grantmaking.

Today, as the communications officer charged with overseeing TCWF’s website, CalWellness.org, she seizes the chance to highlight news about current and past grantees.

“I love the opportunity to feature grantee success stories or really interesting pieces of research that can help health advocates in their efforts,” she said.

She regularly receives updates from TCWF’s program directors, who provide her with news on grantee efforts across the state – like one recently posted tip about Lorna Hawkins, a 1993 TCWF California Peace Prize honoree, who was featured in an NPR news story.

“It’s a great opportunity to keep the word out there,” said Laiché. “It’s such an education for me.”

But for Laiché, it is the TCWF Leadership Awards Program that best exemplifies the success of this communications approach. She oversees the development and implementation of the strategic communications plans for two of the Foundation’s leadership awards: the California Peace Prize and the Public Policy Leadership Award.

Regarding the peace prize, she has witnessed how the attention the honorees receive from the media, their peers, stakeholders, policymakers and elected officials has made a significant difference in their work.

In the case of Hawkins and many of the other honorees over the 17 years of the leadership recognition program, this approach bolsters “their organizations’ health by helping with fundraising and credibility, but also the leaders themselves, who consistently are asked by elected officials to address issues of violence in their community,” she said.

Laiché, who has a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, actively volunteers her time and skills. She currently serves on the Coro Fellows in Public Affairs Selection Committee for Coro Southern California and was on the board of IAM CARES, a nonprofit organization dedicated to job development and placement for people with disabilities. She lives in Burbank with her husband, Edward, and their 4-year-old son, Eddie.