A fair question might be, Well, what are you good and bad at?
Over the past two decades, Chris has worked on just about every kind of messaging challenge and a broad swath of others besides (including but not limited to branding, advertising, app and software user research, strategy, “experiences”). The obvious pattern that has emerged is something like “Good at engineering things made of words that need to win an audience over.” And “not as good at MBA-style project management.” He has to take the dog for shots on the day you want to re-work all your material for the Steering and Governance Committee’s FY## Plan Pillars. Sorry, he’d love to help with that, but this vet visit has been planned for a while. You know how it is.
Examples. Many successes have been along the lines of rebranding or general positioning: of the nine thousand things you could say about yourself, how do you pick the best few, put them in the right order, and say them the best way possible? Large healthcare delivery systems, investment houses, a hedge fund, a telecommunications giant, tech companies providing cloud infrastructure and such.
More examples. But the sweet spot for this kind of work is narrower: a specific point of view that’s hard to explain, or that can be easily lost in the infinite news cycle back-and-forth. An effort to explain to voters why they should accept higher gas taxes for better roads. Making the case in several countries for mutually beneficial trade deals that, while imperfect, are still the best option. Selling small business merchants on the need for investment in more secure payment technology. Striking a new deal with doctors and
Past and personal. The path here has not been a straight one. He began work on Capitol Hill for a messaging research and consulting firm that taught him the ropes of research and introduced him to some of the best colleagues he’d ever make. A decade developing his own research and analysis shop inside one of the nation’s largest and most diverse nonprofit healthcare delivery systems. Before that, a stint teaching rhetoric and creative writing at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. After a BA in English, an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Chris spends most of his time in Baltimore now as a husband to one of Maryland’s best high school English teachers and father to a voraciously curious second grader. He is a regular participant in Stammtisch, a yeoman furniture maker of sturdy, un-Baroque desks, tables, and shelves, and an acolyte of the ancient art of barbecue.
He stubbornly clings to the Oxford comma and does not enjoy writing about himself in the third person.
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