I've spent more than two decades in communications, most of them as the senior-most comms person in the room: the one who briefs the CEO before a hard decision and takes the call after it lands badly.
Most recently that was The Aspen Group, where I was CCO and SVP of Communications and built a 25-person Communications Center of Excellence across a $4B PE-backed healthcare portfolio — Aspen Dental, ClearChoice, WellNow Urgent Care, LOVET Pet Health and Chapter — with Leonard Green, Ares and American Securities on the cap table and the founder still running the company he started. That combination is the whole job in one sentence: three sponsors with three sets of expectations, five brands with five sets of patients, and one founder whose name is on the building.
Before that I led global communications at Shutterfly through Apollo's ownership, which is where I learned what a debt restructuring feels like from the inside, and at Headspace, through multiple funding raises and a founder exit, then Unilever and The Wonderful Company before that. Crisis is the thread through nearly all of it: product recalls, food safety scares, AG inquiries, a supply chain that came apart.
These days I run an independent global strategic communications practice from Abu Dhabi — fractional CCO work, founder and CEO advisory, and crisis readiness for companies where the business is changing faster than the story anyone is telling about it.
This is where CCOs go before their own team briefs them.
CEOs, founders, and chief communications officers at some of the biggest companies in the world start their day with The CCO Dispatch, a daily read on the corporate comms decisions playing out in real time: the CEO statement, the layoff memo that leaked, the apology that made things worse. It crossed 10,000 subscribers in its first few months. The CCO Dispatch is the fastest way to watch someone else's decision go wrong before they have to explain their own.
Founder, Narra Communications Advisory Group
Fractional CCO engagements, founder and CEO advisory, crisis readiness. Plus The CCO Dispatch, daily.
CCO & SVP Communications · The Aspen Group
Built and ran a 25-person Communications Center of Excellence across a $4B PE-backed healthcare portfolio: Aspen Dental, ClearChoice, WellNow Urgent Care, LOVET Pet Health, Chapter.
VP Global Communications
Reporting directly into the CEO, I led social media, influencer marketing, brand strategy and insights, internal communications, PR, CSR and crisis response. Transformed the communications function from a cost center to a profit center.
Headspace · Unilever · The Wonderful Company
Consumer, wellness and food, where the recalls and the food safety scares taught me that the podium is the last place a crisis is decided.
MBA, International Marketing and Management
Boston University. Lived in Shanghai as part of the program.
The moment you're not sure yet is exactly the moment to call.
A CEO platform that isn't landing, a change nobody's explained well yet, or a story about to go public before anyone's thought through how. Most of what makes this work challenging usually stems from a decision that was made without thinking through how it would be explained to the people that matter most. Tell me what's happening and I'll tell you plainly whether I'm the right person for it.