Work
Economic Development & Place Communications
The national story about a place is almost never the right story. Economic data captures what already happened, not what's happening now. Survey data misses the coalition that's forming, the anchor institution that's changing its strategy, the neighborhood that's turning before any indicator shows it.
The organizations that understand this — economic development agencies, place-based coalitions, regional institutions managing transitions — often struggle to translate what they know. Their funders want a metric. Their elected officials want a narrative. Their neighbors want to know they've been heard.
I help bridge that gap. Not by softening the data, but by telling the story the data can't.
Proof: Field reporting and narrative strategy for Coalfield Development on Appalachian economic transition. Stakeholder communications and mode-shift strategy for the Kendall Square Association and Massport. Twelve years as Chair of the Newton Economic Development Commission, where the work was never just about the numbers.
Cleantech & Climate Communications
Most climate risk doesn't arrive as a crisis. It builds slowly, in ways that don't make the news until it's too late to change course. The organizations working to change that trajectory know this better than anyone.
The problem is that their audiences often don't. A funder wants to see a clear theory of change. A regulator wants a manageable risk. A community wants to know what this means for their energy bill and their neighborhood.
Getting those audiences to a shared understanding — before the situation becomes a crisis story — is the work.
Proof: Communications leadership at Greentown Labs, one of the world's largest clean energy incubators. HKS coursework in crisis and risk communication, clean energy policy, and climate mitigation and adaptation planning.
AI & Information-Market Policy Communications
The economics of AI are moving faster than the policy. Publishers, journalism funders, and policymakers are trying to make decisions about content licensing, usage rights, and platform governance in real time, without a clear framework for what the market actually looks like.
Most communications in this space defaults to either alarm or boosterism. Neither helps anyone make a decision.
I help organizations working here develop a clear point of view on what's happening, explain it to the audiences who need to act on it, and do so before the market tips.
Proof: "Feeding the Machine," an original market-structure proposal on AI usage-rights licensing developed through the Harvard Kennedy School Media and Redistribution Fellowship. HKS coursework in platform competition, antitrust, and comparative AI regulation across the US, EU, and China. Ongoing analysis at Trust Issues.
Research-Driven Thought Leadership
Research institutions, policy think tanks, and university-based centers produce work that can genuinely change how decisions get made. Most of it never reaches the right audience.
Part of that is a distribution problem. Part of it is a translation problem — the gap between what the research actually says and what a policy, funder, or general audience can act on. And part of it is a credibility problem: in an information environment where everyone claims to have data, the institutions that do rigorous work need to make that distinction visible.
I read the research, understand the methodology, and help organizations explain what it means and why it matters — without softening the finding or losing the argument.
Proof: Financial and lobbying-disclosure analysis of national advocacy organizations. Published op-eds and columns translating economic and policy research for general audiences. MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School with a focus on competition policy and technology governance.