AMADC Member Profile – meet Hunter Clary, AMADC’S Covid-19 Dad Story
AMADC’S Covid-19 Dad Story
We often read stories about women who have left the workforce, either because of Covid-19 job loss or to take care of kids at home and in virtual school. But what about the dads who have decided to stay-at-home? AMADC member Hunter Clary is a father’s Covid-19 story.
Hunter spent 16 years at the American Psychological Association working on and then running its external and internal communications for the education directorate. Much of his work was focused on raising the importance of psychology to educators and sharing information that would make K-12 education better able to identify psychological issues that affect students.
Hunter’s tenure included several large projects that brought APA’s content to a much bigger audience. Among his accomplishments:
- Creation of his association’s second most popular blog about how teachers can use psychology to help better understand their students learnings.
- Developed relationships with educators that APA could build upon and would last.
Last spring APA laid off 20 percent of its staff and Hunter’s position as Associate Executive Director was eliminated. His wife has a good and steady job as a senior analyst at the Department of Defense so he became the educator of the family.
Hunter’s son is 10 and in the fifth grade. His school is completely virtual. Most school days start at 9:00 with morning meetings, followed by two hours of course work. Often there’s asynchronous learning during the middle of the day before lunch. This type of learning is student-centered in which instructors usually set up a learning path, which students engage with at their own pace.
During this time, Hunter likes to arrange lunch Zoom meetings with friends to keep up. social connections. Afternoons are another two-hour block of coursework. After school is typically filled with a mix of homework, socially distanced organized sports, or free play outdoors before dinner and reading in the evening.
In the meantime, Hunter is researching and rethinking how marketing works. At AMADC, he is assistant vice president for communications. In this role, he oversees the social media team and email marketing for events. He is working to provide leadership and comradery to a disparate group of volunteers who have very limited time outside of work, home and families.
“I’m never going to be an expert in all things but I love exploring content marketing and authenticity,” he said. “Today we’re not about the old interruption of marketing which often shoved a product or service in your face. Today, organizations have to look outside of themselves to connect with customers through content.”