Rising Tide Interactive Spotlight: Driving Change Through Collaborative Client Campaigns

I have known about Rising Tide Interactive since 2017 for its amazing work. I’ve been a prospective client, competitor, and now a partner to their team, and I’m excited to highlight their and Claire O’Brien’s stories in this #RespondentSpotlight.

Claire O'Brien loves the feeling of seeing it all come together. Some of her favorite work experiences are when a client campaign not only launches successfully but also delivers results beyond what she hoped.

She finds this feeling most when combining a wide range of elements into a single persuasion campaign for Rising Tide Interactive, or RTI for short. RTI is a woman-owned full-service digital firm that combines impactful digital strategy with exceptional client service. Claire is the Lead Strategist on the Client Strategy Team, making her one of her clients' main points of contact.

Although she works on a variety of projects at the same time, she says her job is to look at the big picture and serve as a “bridge between our clients and our internal teams in realizing our clients’ visions of the work we do together.” It’s a role she’s grown into through two different experiences working at RTI.

Claire worked at RTI in a different role between 2018 – 2019 before leaving to pursue an opportunity as the Deputy National Organizing Director at Demand Justice, a progressive legal advocacy organization working on issues across U.S. courts. She returned to RTI and the digital space after the 2020 elections to work with clients and causes that could help build the progressive movement for the 2022 midterms and beyond.

RTI has lived up to that expectation in its more than decade-long history. The company was founded in 2011 and has been at the forefront of working with mission-driven groups, from campaigns to advocacy movements and nonprofits.

With nearly 50 members of its team, mainly in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, RTI prides itself on ten core values central to its work. They are:

1. We work with clients driving positive change.
2. We’re not jerks.
3. We’re inclusive.
4. We celebrate one another’s successes.
5. We’re accountable to ourselves and one another.
6. We embrace giving and receiving feedback.
7. We welcome new ideas.
8. We follow data.
9. We’re creative, flexible, and empowered by challenges.
10. We persist.

Their large team size means RTI generally works with approximately 30 political, advocacy, and nonprofit clients at a time. From working with political clients who often need to respond immediately to recent events, RTI has honed an ability to execute campaigns quickly. . Although rapid response can bring challenges, Claire believes it can also be rewarding to see everything come together in short order.

Because she works with many different types of clients, Claire and her team see their hard work pay off in distinct ways. They include working with a diverse range of organizations to help elect Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia to creating local impact with in-state partners in Mississippi to pass criminal justice reform bills.

While Claire and her team have only been on Prosal for a few weeks, they’re excited to see all the opportunities that can come from it, especially from great organizations that aren’t within their existing networks. In doing so, Claire and her team can continue applying the tactics they have refined in advocacy to more traditional nonprofits.