Meet Our Staff: Taylor Miller

Taylor Miller is confident that if the nonprofit sector were a sport, it would be football (she would know: as an undergraduate at Howard University, she minored in sports administration). Like football, Taylor says, nonprofits are “a game of strategy and a game of inches.” The aim is to keep moving forward no matter what: “Every inch we make towards our goal is progress.”

As a Senior Digital Communications Strategist at Alliance for Justice, Taylor helps craft the organization’s online gameplan, using social media and other online tools to build AFJ’s audience. After years of working in nonprofit communications, she joined AFJ in January 2022, drawn by the opportunity to explore a new subject: “I was really intrigued by the courts system and interested in learning about what is, in my opinion, the forgotten branch of our government,” she explains.

Translating that forgotten branch—and why it shouldn’t be forgotten—into social media makes up the bulk of Taylor’s work at AFJ. On a regular day, she posts, responds to comments, and manages the social media accounts of AFJ and AFJ Action, its 501(c)4 affiliate. AFJ is on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; AFJ Action is on Facebook, Twitter, and, as of August 2, TikTok.

Led by Taylor, AFJ’s communications team launched AFJ Action’s TikTok following an extensive period of research where Taylor dug into the platform’s algorithm to chart an engagement strategy on what she calls “Gen Z’s social media headquarters” (Gen Z makes up an estimated 60-70% of TikTok users in the United States).

The channel’s first TikTok looks the urgent need for ethics reform on the Supreme Court, especially given the ongoing ethics scandals of Justices Thomas and Alito. As AFJ’s Aron Senior Justice Counsel Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza explains in the video, Supreme Court justices are the only federal officials who are not bound by ethics codes.

Unlike the Supreme Court, Taylor follows a strong code of ethics, which she developed through her M.P.S degree in Design and Management Communications from Georgetown University. “As a communications professional, ethics are applied to your work every day,” she explains. “You always want to make sure that you’re putting out the most accurate, honest information.”

For Taylor, social media’s capacity for positive change lies in an informed public (although she acknowledges that social media can “become a place where people thrive off trolling”). With AFJ and AFJ Action’s social media, she hopes to inform and encourage people “to learn how the courts system truly affects their lives.”

After spending at least eight hours a day, five days a week, working on social media, Taylor goes offline and turns to the high-octane duo of exercise and reality TV. “I find that anything related to the Real Housewives, or on TLC, definitely takes the edge off,” she says.