This nonprofit taps creators to tackle bias and grief—and pairs personal stories with facts
Lean In and Option B, two initiatives under the Sheryl Sandberg Bernthal foundation, turn to creator partnerships to humanize the stats.
When creators turn to social media to start the conversation, Nikki Tucker is ready with the research to back them up.
“It’s light humor and a little sarcasm, but everything we put out there is factual,” said Tucker. Tucker is the head of social at The Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Facebook.
Tucker is referencing a partnership with creator Cherie Brooke, who playfully shares that her favorite form of “micro-feminism” at work is bringing women back into the conversation when they’ve been interrupted—and directly asking the women who have been quiet throughout the meeting if they have anything to add before it ends.
Alongside senior social media lead Taylor Steinbeck, Tucker is leading a social media presence for two initiatives across Sandberg’s foundation: Lean In (@leaninorg), which is focused on women advancement in the workplace, and Option B (@optionB), a resource for navigating grief.
Through amplifying personal narratives from creators and replacing rumination with resources, the team is offering these audiences both comfort and calls to action. Instead of working to introduce new conversations on social media, Steinbeck and Tucker set out to give trending topics authority and direction.
“Our programs have a script on how to call out these biases and microaggressions, but I’m just tweaking the language and breaking down the data to make it more accessible,” said Tucker. “Influencers help us do that very easily.”
Pairing personal narratives with facts
When Tucker saw that creators Sydney and Maya (aka @corporateincolor) used a TikTok trend to draw attention to their experiences in the workplace, she immediately reached out to expand the conversation.
The part two, which lives on Lean In’s Instagram and features lines like “I’m a Black woman at work, of course I’m expected to run the DEI initiatives,” is paired with a message for users to read the foundation’s Women in the Workplace report, which has more data about Black women at work.
“People are using social media to call men in and hold them accountable, and we have the research and data to jump in,” said Tucker. “We can hop on a trend with an influencer, play with the delivery and make it ownable to us.”
Internalizing audience needs
While Lean In’s page is heavy on research, Steinbeck’s approach differs on Option B. When creating content for a page that is devoted to grief management, Steinbeck takes a lighter approach while also keeping things actionable.
Steinbeck’s most successful campaign on the page came from an animated collab reel with faceless creator @itslennie. The "little animated blob" was there to remind those who are struggling without family members during the holidays that they aren’t alone. It was their most successful partnership to date, with 1.9 million organic views and over 90k total engagement.
“Our audience there is not actually too interested in stats and research. It doesn’t translate as well to grief,” said Steinbeck. “Most people who follow that page are really there for validation.”
Rewarding vulnerability
When Option B decided to partner with micro influencer Ashley Reese for Valentine’s Day this year, she received more engagement year-over-year than the influencer who worked with them the year before—despite having hundreds of thousands of fewer followers.
“There’s that quote ‘The Personal is Universal,” said Steinbeck, who pointed to Reese’s high engagement rate and responsive community. “When someone is speaking specifically to their own experience, so many people can relate to that.” .
While social media has historically been reserved for entertainment and lightheartedness, Steinbeck argues that candid conversation—regardless of how earnest it may be—is what gets people to stop scrolling.
“There is a lot of sugar coating on social media,” said Steinbeck. “When people are only showing the best parts of their lives, we hope our content can make them feel a bit more seen.”
