Meet Trailblazer Echo Rivera

Today we’d like to introduce you to Echo Rivera.

Echo, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My goal is to help put an end to boring presentations. I earned a Ph.D. in community psychology and worked at a nonprofit evaluation center for three years. That translates to over a decade of working on or leading research/evaluation projects. In that time, I realized most of the people in this area (academics, researchers, evaluators, service providers) didn’t know how to make visually engaging, impactful presentations.

To be honest, most educational and scientific presentations are  text-heavy lists of facts and information.

They lack stories and visuals, but more importantly, they don’t follow best practices for how humans learn, which means they are easily forgotten. And that sucks! My background is on research-activism and my background includes using research to promote social justice and equity. It’s both frustrating and disheartening to see this important work not make the impact it could be making because of a not-great presentation. I left my evaluation job and started Creative Research Communications so I could help educators and researchers communicate more effectively and creatively. Most of what I do is help my clients create visually engaging presentations, but I also help with more creative things like research comics, infographics, data visualizations, and well-designed public reports.

Has it been a smooth road?
Hah. Yeah no, there have been a lot of struggles, that’s for sure. But honestly, that’s expected because it’s difficult to build your own business. It’s been worth it, struggles and all. One of the biggest struggles for me has been charging for information. I come from an academic environment where it’s part of the culture to share information freely with peers and colleagues. It’s been weird for me to share some information for free online and reserve some information only to those who enroll in my online course or participate in my training workshop. If I could, I would just share it all for free because I really just want everyone to create better presentations. Sadly, if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills. So, figuring out where that line was took a lot of time, and I feel like I’m
still trying to figure it out.

We’d love to hear more about Creative Research Communications.
I help academics, evaluators, researchers, scientists, and similar professionals (basically anyone who uses slides to share educational material to adults) share their work in more effective and creative ways. This mostly means helping them create better slide presentations (PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides) from start to finish. But, this also includes creative things like comics, infographics, data visualizations, zines, visual abstracts, and more. I provide self-paced training (online courses), group training (webinars and in-person workshops), 1:1 training via video calls, and design services. Basically, I try to have an option for everyone regardless of their budget and how much time they have (or don’t have) available.

I’m probably most known for my online course called Blast Off to Stellar Slides. I took all of my best strategies for storyboarding & designing engaging presentations and turned it into an 8-week online course. I love the online course format because I can help anyone regardless of where they live and what their time zone is, and they can watch the course lessons at times that work best for them. Even if I did 40 hours of 1:1 calls every week, that would still be a limited number of people learning how to create effective presentations. By having an online course, I can train a lot more people. What people seem to enjoy about me is my “high energy”, approach (I hear that ALL the time) and that I make learning fun and enjoyable. I mean, I have a flying unicorn in some of my YouTube videos (his name is Boris and he’s the Director of Joy at CRC)! People aren’t used to seeing an academic presentation with a flying unicorn, so it definitely stands out. I also do NOT shame or negatively judge anyone. I work extremely hard to make the space I create an empowering, positive setting. People also like that my strategies are practical, actionable and that they WORK. They actually help people create better presentations.

Do you feel like there was something about the experiences you had growing up that played an outsized role in setting you up for success later in life?

My family owns a small business (my dad makes violins) and while I was an undergraduate student I worked there as the Office Manager. I learned a lot about running a business from that experience—from accounting to marketing—which helped me “hit the ground running” with my own business.

Sources of inspiration:

I would say Ann K. Emery of Depict Data Studio. She started a similar company a few years before me and was a well-known rockstar before I came to the scene. Yet, she reached out to me and suggested we do a video call to get to know each other and chat business. Since then, we’ve been sharing support, tips, and advice. She is so smart, so generous, and so supportive, I don’t know where I’d be if we hadn’t connected. Not only have I learned effective communication and data visualization skills from her, but she has also helped me ride the “struggle waves”; that comes with running a business. She even inspired me to do the samesupport others with others because she very much proved to me those old sayings like “a rising tide lifts all boats”.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.echorivera.com/
• Instagram: instagram.com/echoechoR
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/echoechoR
• Twitter: twitter.com/echoechoR
• Other: https://m.youtube.com/c/echorivera

Image Credit:
Jason Rivera

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