CASE STUDY
Summit Foundation
Strengthening digital presence and efficiency for mountain protection through strategic technical consolidation and authentic branding.
THE CHALLENGE
The setup when I arrived
Summit Foundation is a five-person NGO that organises clean-up operations in the Swiss mountains. I joined for a one-year civil service term as Chargé de Communication, responsible for social media, photography and video.
Alongside that I took on their digital infrastructure. They had four separate websites, each with its own theme and update schedule, and nobody on staff whose job it was to look after them. The foundation runs largely on civil service staff who rotate every six months, so knowledge kept leaving with the people who had it. What they needed was one CMS and one design system that a non-technical person could operate without calling a developer.
I rebuilt everything in WordPress with Bricks Builder and brought the four sites into one environment behind a single dashboard. After my service year finished I stayed on part-time as Digital Project Manager until December 2025, looking after the infrastructure and the social channels.
Alongside that I took on their digital infrastructure. They had four separate websites, each with its own theme and update schedule, and nobody on staff whose job it was to look after them. The foundation runs largely on civil service staff who rotate every six months, so knowledge kept leaving with the people who had it. What they needed was one CMS and one design system that a non-technical person could operate without calling a developer.
I rebuilt everything in WordPress with Bricks Builder and brought the four sites into one environment behind a single dashboard. After my service year finished I stayed on part-time as Digital Project Manager until December 2025, looking after the infrastructure and the social channels.
THE SCOPE
What the work covered
Digital Strategy
Process Design
Workflow Automation
Brand guidelines
Web Development
Technical Consolidation
One system instead of four
Four legacy WordPress sites, each with its own theme, login and update schedule. I audited what was still being used, dropped what wasn't, and rebuilt the rest in a single Bricks install.
Something a rotating team can run
Staff turn over every six months. I built a global dashboard and wrote the workflows down in Notion, so someone arriving in January can publish an event in their first week without asking anyone.
One visual system, web and social
A single set of templates and rules covering the website and the social output, so temporary staff could produce on-brand material without a designer in the room.
THE WORK
The minimal, high-impact homepage — Working for Cleaner Mountains.
A unified design language applied across web and social, allowing temporary staff to generate on-brand assets in minutes.
Infrastructure
Tech Stack
I replaced a fragmented, high-maintenance setup with a modern, "low-debt" ecosystem designed for ease of use by non-technical staff:
WordPress & Bricks Builder
Four sites migrated into one environment. Bricks kept the front end light and made it possible to run a single design system across everything the foundation publishes.
MainWP
One dashboard for updates, security and site health across the whole network, instead of four separate logins.
Infomaniak
Swiss hosting, which fit both the performance requirement and the foundation's own environmental commitments.
Notion
A Civilist Dashboard documenting the workflows, so the team arriving in six months has something to read on day one.
Integrated Chat System
A direct chat tool to cut down internal email, since the team works semi-remotely.
What changed
One site instead of four
One install, one login, one place to look when something breaks.
The team runs it themselves
New staff manage events and updates from the dashboard without going through a developer.
Less chasing numbers
The social output moved towards what the foundation actually does on the ground, rather than what performs.
Photography & Videography
A big part of my job there was also to supervise, manage, and produce a large volume of content, maintaining high quality while staying true and transparent to the roots of what we share. From 2023 to 2025, I managed and supervised all content production across Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
The Motivation
Why I took it
I came to Summit through civilian service, which in Switzerland you do instead of military service. Opting for it was a decision about conscience, and it would have been strange to make that choice and then spend the year somewhere I didn't care about. Summit was the opposite of that. I grew up skiing above Gryon, and the foundation spends its time clearing rubbish off the same mountains. Rebuilding a website is an indirect way to protect one, but it was the skill I had."