BRENDAN HEATH
Creative Director, Donor Strategy
Brendan Heath is a Creative Director who specializes in transforming bold ideas into experiences that inspire action and unlock philanthropic investment. With more than two decades of international experience across 40 countries, Brendan has led diverse teams in developing strategic campaigns that connect deeply with audiences, donors, and stakeholders.
At the heart of Brendan’s process is strategic concepting — crafting evidence-based cases for support that blend donor insights with high-impact creative storytelling. His presentations are not just pitches; they are narratives that invite high-value donors to see themselves as agents of change.
Brendan’s work spans both leading global brands and mission-driven nonprofits. For Conservation International and the African Wildlife Foundation, Brendan created Wildlife in Winter — an immersive interactive experience that placed giraffes and rhinos into stark winter landscapes, a haunting metaphor for climate displacement. What began as a cinematic campaign evolved into a 360° interactive exhibition where donor actions directly restored habitats in real time. By blending VR, projection mapping, and interactive storytelling, Brendan turned empathy into agency — inspiring awe, urgency, and giving.
For the American Bird Conservancy, he created an emotive campaign combining live-action, 3D modelling, and CG animation to follow a bird’s perilous journey home — a narrative that stirred empathy and inspired support for conservation efforts. With the National Council for Problem Gambling, he took a different approach, using humor and celebrity talent to break stigma, engage hard-to-reach audiences, and generate measurable results. For the Mayo Clinic, Brendan built a patient-centered platform that showcased real stories of resilience and healing, fostering community and deeper donor engagement.
Equally at home with cutting-edge technologies, Brendan has pioneered immersive VR, holographic displays, projection mapping, and interactive 3D storytelling. At Meta, he built interactive environments where visitors could explore and even influence narratives in real time. To ensure long-term donor value, he established best practices that made these immersive experiences sustainable, scalable, and future-proof.
From beauty icons like L’Oréal and Pantene to nonprofits advancing conservation, healthcare, and social change, Brendan’s strength lies in translating vision into impact. His gift is helping donors not just see the story, but feel their role within it — empowering them to act, invest, and leave a legacy.
NOWHERE TO GO – MULTIPLATFORM INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING CAMPAIGN
In a bold joint initiative between Conservation International (CI) and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF)—two globally respected stewards of biodiversity— Brendan developed a high-concept campaign that placed giraffes, rhinos, and lions, icons of Africa’s warm landscapes, into stark winter environments. The surreal imagery — a giraffe stranded on a melting ice floe, a rhino trudging across frozen tundra, a lion standing knee-deep in snow with an existential contemplation — became a haunting metaphor for displacement and the brutal consequences of climate change. What began as a cinematic video and stills campaign evolved into a 360° immersive exhibition, where visitors stepped into these altered habitats through VR headsets, projection mapping, and interactive storytelling. Using technologies like Unreal Engine, ambisonic soundscapes, and motion tracking, guests weren’t just witnesses — they became participants. Donations triggered real-time changes in the environment: ice stabilized, habitats regenerated, herds returned. By turning empathy into visible impact, Brendan built an experience that was both a chilling warning and a call to action — one that inspired awe, urgency, and giving.
THE GIRAFFE ON THE ICE FLOE: Isolation and Urgency
One of the campaign’s most iconic visuals features a solitary giraffe drifting on a melting ice floe, surrounded by an endless expanse of arctic water. Her elongated form is dwarfed by the vast, unnatural environment. She gazes down at her own reflection—not in admiration, but in search of connection, perhaps even memory. This quiet, contemplative moment becomes a powerful metaphor for alienation from habitat, community, and survival. The giraffe’s stillness invites viewers to reflect on the consequences of inaction, while her fragility in such an alien climate stirs a deep, instinctual empathy.
RHINO ON A FROZEN LAKE: Strength in Peril
In a companion piece, a rhinoceros navigates a frozen wasteland, trudging through snow that does not belong beneath its feet. A surreal detail interrupts the scene: a human-made drinking hole in the ice, punctured by a massive corkscrew. It’s a haunting symbol of the well-intentioned yet inadequate attempts to solve ecological collapse with quick fixes or outdated thinking. The rhino remains stoic and powerful—but its surroundings speak of urgency, threat, and the encroaching absurdity of human error. This visual allegory challenges viewers to question how we address climate and conservation—reminding us that real solutions require more than gestures; they require transformation.
THE LION IN THE SNOW: Majesty Displaced
In another haunting tableau, a lion stands knee-deep in snow, its golden mane tangled with frost, a stark contrast against the white drifts and distant, glacial peaks. Accustomed to the heat of the savannah, this king of beasts now finds itself isolated in a landscape that offers no warmth, no prey, no shelter. Captured mid-step, the lion gazes into the distance—not in search of dominance, but with a quiet, almost existential contemplation. It is as though it senses the shifting borders of survival, instinctively aware that its ancestral range is changing beneath its paws. This image speaks not just to habitat loss, but to territorial dislocation. Lions are increasingly pushed into unfamiliar regions, forced to adapt or perish. The snowy mountains behind this noble figure serve as a metaphor for the rising obstacles facing apex predators: altered ecosystems, dwindling food sources, and vanishing territory. As with the giraffe and rhino, the lion's presence in an unnatural environment is a visual rupture—a symbol of nature out of balance. It invites the viewer to reconsider the cost of climate change not just in degrees, but in the displacement of entire species, stripped of the very worlds that shaped them.
Brendan Heath: Photographer – A Visionary Behind the Lens
Brendan Heath’s photography exists at the intersection of elegance, emotion, and untamed imagination. Known for his striking versatility, Brendan moves seamlessly between the refined worlds of fashion and beauty and the raw, conceptual landscapes of environmental storytelling. His lens doesn’t just capture moments — it captures narratives that linger, confront, and inspire.
In the realms of fashion and beauty, Brendan’s work is defined by a timeless yet modern aesthetic. His portraits possess an effortless sophistication, where every frame reveals the unique strength and vulnerability of his subjects. Whether capturing the fluid grace of hair in motion or the intimate allure of a model’s gaze, his images are meticulously crafted, balancing composition, lighting, and mood with a mastery that recalls the classic elegance of Patrick Demarchelier and the cinematic flair of Mario Testino. His collaborations with major beauty and fashion brands exude authenticity and precision, creating imagery that feels both aspirational and achingly human.
Yet Brendan’s artistry stretches beyond the polished studio floors and into the heart of the wild — or rather, into wildness reimagined. In his conceptual photography, Brendan tackles themes of environmental conservation with a provocative edge. Channeling the storytelling depth of Peter Lindbergh, he places wild animals into surreal, unfamiliar environments, confronting viewers with powerful juxtapositions: giraffes on icebergs, lions traversing snow covered landscapes in search of new hunting grounds. These haunting images speak to the urgency of habitat loss, challenging us to reconsider the fragile boundaries between nature and civilization. They are more than visual statements; they are calls to action, layered with symbolism and subtle irony.
Brendan's ability to effortlessly pivot between these worlds — the refined and the raw, the beautiful and the brutal — sets him apart. His work is unified by a commitment to authenticity, a deep respect for the stories his subjects tell, and an uncanny knack for amplifying emotion through visual composition. Whether he’s capturing the perfect elegance of a couture gown or the jarring poignancy of displaced wildlife, Brendan’s photography remains arresting, evocative, and impossible to ignore.
In a world awash with imagery, Brendan Heath’s photographs cut through the noise — reminding us of the beauty we celebrate, the wildness we stand to lose, and the stories that connect us all.