Activating Northwell Health’s brand purpose through Movement Thinking

Author's Biography

Ramon Soto is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Northwell Health, where he is responsible for developing and executing Northwell’s brand strategy and all aspects of marketing and communications, including public relations, digital engagement, strategic marketing, clinical marketing, customer acquisition and internal communications. He is a member of Northwell’s executive leadership team, charged with shaping the growth strategy for the enterprise. Northwell is New York’s largest healthcare provider, with a network of 21 hospitals, nearly 900 community and research facilities and 85,000 employees. With over 2 million annual patient visits, Northwell is also one of the nation’s fastest-growing healthcare providers. Ramon received a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton, a master of business administration degree from the Yale School of Management and an advance management degree from Harvard Business School. He currently sits on the board of directors for the Ad Council.

Ali Demos is Group Strategy Director at StrawberryFrog and leads brand planning on Northwell Health, among other clients. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Ali leads a video ethnography practice within the strategy department and has made ethnographic films for many famous brands, including IKEA, IBM, American Express, Starbucks, Dove, UPS and DuPont. For six years, she captained Ogilvy’s Effectiveness practice for North America leading the agency to six consecutive NA Effie victories. She has created brand and value proposition solves for clients across many categories, including Crowe, EY (Ernst & Young), MSCI, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Comcast Business, Barclays Global, BlackRock and iShares, Brown Shoe, FINRA, Janssen, HighTower, Kaplan, Kimberly-Clark and Lenovo. Ali has also been a hands-on, streetwise cultural researcher. She trained at the Citizen’s Police Academy in New York City for dissertation research on masculinity and law enforcement; explored the ‘Bollywood’ phenomenon and the cult of Hindi movie stars while travelling in India; and wrote a thesis about the paradoxes of gender identity in the highly secretive community of Boston-area cross dressers. Ali holds an MA in cultural anthropology from Princeton and a BA in social anthropology from Harvard.

Scott Goodson is the founder of StrawberryFrog, the renowned creative marketing consultancy that works with clients to develop their own breakthrough strategies and brand movements. He is one of the industry’s top names in turning brand purpose into action with Movement Thinking, to transform organisations and employees and to mobilise consumers for growth. His books ‘Activate Brand Purpose’ (2022) and bestseller ‘Uprising’ (2012) sold thousands of copies. His most enduring contribution was inventing Movement Thinking.1 A fount of experience and enthusiasm, Scott is a trusted strategy adviser for CEOs, CMOs and leaders at Northwell, as well as Google, P&G, Truist and Walmart. He has lectured on movements at Harvard and Columbia business schools and on BBC and CNN, and he writes for Harvard Business Review and Inc Magazine.