Working with trusted messengers and community partners can dramatically strengthen your local impact — but it takes the right structure, roles, and creative thinking to make it work. In this session, Liz Worthington walks you through strategies and frameworks developed through the American Press Institute's Influencer Learning Cohort, including how to identify who trusted messengers and influencers really are in a local context, how to assemble the right team and define roles that make collaboration successful, and how to apply creative thinking tools like the pyramid framework and a roadmap for roles. You'll also work through some of the same exercises cohort participants used to sharpen their approaches, leaving with actionable ideas you can adapt to your own newsroom.

Liz Worthington is Director of Product Strategy at the American Press Institute and a former journalist and editor with nearly two decades of experience working with publishers and newsrooms.