Honeyguide was founded on a simple belief: good work only matters when it is used.
Like the honeyguide bird that leads people to hidden honey, our team helps organisations communicate complex information with strategy, clarity and purpose.
Dr Tali Hoffman, Founder and Director
Tali Hoffman is a strategic communication specialist. She helps organisations explain complex work clearly. More importantly, she helps make sure the work is actually used.
Tali began her career as a scientist. During her PhD in zoology she realised that the main barrier to impact was rarely a lack of good research. The problem was that valuable knowledge wasn’t reaching the people who needed it. Reports were too technical for decision makers, difficult to interpret across disciplines, and too time consuming for busy practitioners. Important work existed, but it wasn’t shaping real decisions.
So she moved into science communication to solve that problem directly.
For nearly two decades she has worked at the space between research and action, helping organisations turn evidence into something people can understand, trust and act on. She creates clear and engaging communication products, but also works with teams to think through what should be communicated, to whom, and at what stage of a project so that communication actually supports implementation.
A particular strength of her work is the breadth of organisations she collaborates with. She has worked with research institutes, NGOs, government initiatives, private-sector and mission-driven organisations, and multilateral agencies. This range means she understands how different audiences think, what they need in order to make decisions, and how to translate knowledge so it works across sectors. Clients include the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the African Climate and Development Initiative, the ARUA Centre of Excellence in Climate and Development, and several international climate and sustainability programmes.
Across projects she has developed communication strategies, synthesised dense documents, written and edited major knowledge products and policy-relevant outputs, and designed widely used infographics and learning resources. She has also trained nearly 500 researchers and professionals in writing, presenting and visualising their work through programmes delivered for UNEP, universities and international funders.
In short, if you have important work that isn’t yet reaching the people who need it, Tali helps you find the honey in it – and make sure someone actually tastes it!
Brendon Bosworth, Collaborator
Brendon Bosworth is a communications specialist, science communication trainer and principal consultant at Human Element Communications. He launched Human Element Communications in 2019 with the goal of making research on topics of global concern more accessible to non-specialists. He believes in the power of human connection to help make facts and figures relatable and applies a narrative-based and solutions-oriented approach to all of his work. He is committed to ensuring that research that contributes to solving global challenges reaches audiences beyond academic institutions, particularly in the African context.
Honeyguide partners with Human Element Communications to design and deliver communication training programmes and workshops.
Zoë Boshoff, Collaborator
As a fundraising coach and project development specialist, Zoë Boshoff from Flametree Fundraising supports teams and individuals to become better at fundraising by helping them to articulate their impact strategy, and to design stronger projects and programmes.
We combine our skills to help clients achieve impact by focusing inward, on their organisational effectiveness and sustainability, and outward, on their communication strategies. This integrated approach sets teams up for effective fundraising that is linked to clearly-articulated impacts.
Rebecca Cullis, Collaborator
Rebecca Cullis is a freelance researcher, writer and communications specialist, with experience working for environmental and development projects in southern Africa, including climate change related projects. We work together on projects involving content synthesis, writing and design work.