Emmy Award-winning storyteller and communication leader, with more than two decades of experience in navigating turbulent, transformative times from the front lines.
As the President and co-founder of HRH Media Group LLC, I guide organizations — Fortune 100 corporations, non-profits, startups and learning institutions — through thoughtful narrative shifts and outright existential reinvention.
It’s all about storytelling with strategic insight, supported with the premise that leaders should thrive in the face of adversity. It’s a unique approach that I have honed in my own professional journey.
After earning law degrees from McGill and Paris-Panthéon-Assas universities, I leveraged a master’s in journalism from Columbia University to land my first full-time position at NBC News in New York. This fast-paced environment stoked a need to witness real-time change first-hand. Thus my move to the Middle East with NBC to cover the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. While stationed there, I also spent considerable time in the Balkans, which is where I earned an Emmy nomination for a story about landmine survivors in Bosnia, and ultimately an award for extensive coverage of the war in Kosovo.
During that time, I grew frustrated with the slow adoption of digital storytelling methods. So, despite my success, I left the network to develop those nascent techniques as one of the first “backpack” television reporters — learning how to shoot, edit and transmit my own stories with Canada-based CBC News. Within 18 months, NBC came calling with a request to apply these new skills to cover the imminent U.S. war with Iraq. In this way, the American network became the first client of my new company, HRH Media.
It was a trial-by-fire for digital storytelling. Equipped with a small video camera, laptop and satellite phone, I reported live over six hundred times for MSNBC, CNBC and CBC from warships and oil rigs in the middle of the Persian Gulf, to hotel rooms in Syria, to fortified newsrooms in Baghdad. I would then harness these same techniques in the early days of streaming media to produce two award-winning “Independent America” documentaries that were broadcast worldwide and featured on the nascent Hulu and Netflix portals. Further work with the U.S. Agency for International Development southern Africa honed my “direct to audience” method of storytelling, with governments and NGO’s viewing the films I produced, influencing policy change.
With a fresh perspective on how organizations could tell their own stories, independent of traditional media outlets, I joined forces with the University of Washington to reimagine a new graduate degree curriculum in storytelling and digital media for professionals. As director of the Communication Leadership program, I charted new paths for trust and persuasion with my students, collaborating with significant innovation leaders in the Seattle region. I engaged Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in one of his first significant on-camera interviews, and advised a number of companies and non-profits on digital strategy. My book, “Storyteller Uprising: Trust and Persuasion in the Digital Age” was required reading both for my students, as well as for the undergraduate honors program at University of California Santa Cruz. The TEDx talk “Why I drop the mic” that I delivered to students at Oregon State University served as a blueprint for professional rebooting in a time of historic change.
Over the past decade, I have collaborated with the leadership of various organizations to make sense of the implications of Artificial Intelligence. This work involves exploring AI’s transformative impact on business, society, and ethics. By demystifying AI through storytelling and strategic communication, I motivate organizations to navigate this complex technological landscape, ensuring they harness its potential responsibly and effectively. Much of this ethos is represented in my “Wind Rose Declaration: 16 Tenets for Real-Time Leadership.”
Presently, I serve as advisor to CETI (A Creative and Emergent Technology Institute in Portland, Oregon), Factal (a risk intelligence news platform in Seattle) and Foot Soldiers Park (a civil rights and urban development organization in Selma, Alabama). I also work directly with the Vice Provost of the University of Washington’s Continuum College as we consider the implications of technology and larger societal changes on workforce development. My latest film is American Dignity.
Contact me via LinkedIn.
HRH MEDIA 