Why the name ‘Moonsail North’? FOCUS magazine chats with our team.

By Rose Tantraphol

Members of #TeamMoonsail get the question all the time: Why “Moonsail North”?

It was a treat to get a call from FOCUS, the magazine of the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, to chat about this question and several others, including what puts the wind in our sails, why innovation is key to what we do, and why our team is committed to supporting charities.

We appreciate the opportunity to talk about what we love to do! See the full issue online or check out the Moonsail North in FOCUS PDF. We also share the piece below.

FOCUS piece

 

“Neuroscientists and poets agree that humans crave stories. I am not a neuroscientist or a poet, but I have a personal and professional connection to storytelling — and so does every member of the team,” said Rose Tantraphol, co-founder of Moonsail North. With specialized services in storytelling, strategic communications, strategic planning, social media and digital marketing, Moonsail North helps innovators communicate and grow.

Founded at the end of 2014, Moonsail North was named after Radiohead’s “Sail to the Moon” song, which, to co-owners Rose Tantraphol and Scott Swanson, meant pushing forward to a brighter future.

“We set Moonsail North’s values on a compass. Our cardinal directions are to be collaborative, creative, community-focused, and passionate,” said Tantraphol. “By working with clients at the leading edge of innovation, we are working with organizations whose mission involves – in different ways, of course – making our world a better place today and tomorrow.”

Sedora Tantraphol, who serves as Moonsail North’s director of strategy, spent most of her career working with forward-thinking organizations in Southern California and the Bay Area. With a shared presence in Michigan and Silicon Valley, the Moonsail North team has carefully set up their internal communications platform to foster a collaborative and creative environment across time zones.

“While you can argue that we have never had the kinds of global challenges we face today, we’ve never had the kind of innovations we are currently witnessing,” Tantraphol said.

The Moonsail North team works with these innovations in industries such as sustainability, economic development, health services, higher education and early education. Rose explains that Moonsail North is open to organic and unexpected collaborations that align with their mission, vision and values that could take them into a direction that they have not yet explored.

“We sail in the same waters, but we like the construction of our ship to turn some heads,” said Tantraphol. “Our collaborative and creative nature means that we’re ready for an adventure whenever clients step on board.”

An integrated culture is extremely important to the start-up, whose employees are passionate about entrepreneurship and bring talent into storytelling and capacity building.

The Moonsail North team measures its success externally by excellent outcomes for clients and internally by whether they are able to provide a learning-rich, creative environment for team members to grow personally and professionally.

Moonsail North also believes that success is best experienced when shared, which is why donating to charities is part of their business model, even as a start-up. In this vein, they have also adopted a birthday tradition, where team members pick a charity to donate to on their special day. Previous charities have included the Greater Lansing Food Bank, Girls on the Run, Sharks4Kids, One Drop, and the Refugee Development Center.

Rose is grateful for the generosity and spirit in Lansing and appreciates the momentum in the innovation, business growth and community building that is currently happening.

In the future, Moonsail North hopes to sail to expansive waters and continue helping clients strategically tell their story.

For more information about Moonsail North, visit msnmoonsailnorth.kinsta.cloud and connect with the agency and individual team members on social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and many more.