Work with me

Strategic communications and narrative consulting for mission-driven organisations

The organisations that find their way here are usually past the point of believing a messaging fix will solve what they're facing. They work on consequential things — responsible AI, social change, clean tech — and they've learned that the gap between what they do and what they're able to say publicly runs deeper than communication. This practice exists for that gap: helping organisations build the strategic foundations that make honest, credible, and durable communication possible. Two engagements are available, depending on where you are and what you need.

Wayfinding

A diagnostic engagement — 4 to 6 weeks

Most organisations that come to Wayfinding sense that something isn't working. They can feel the friction in how they talk about their work, in the decisions that keep getting deferred, and in the gap between what they do and what they're able to say publicly. What they don't yet have is a clear picture of why, or what it would take to change it.

Wayfinding is a structured investigation into that gap. Over four to six weeks, we examine your organisation's communications, narrative, and positioning from the inside out, across functions, across hierarchies, and across the distance between your intentions and how they are perceived.

The result is an honest account of where you are, what's underneath the surface problem, and what the path forward actually requires.

    • Your organisation can't agree on its position on a contested issue, and the silence or the inconsistency is starting to cost you.

    • You're doing genuinely important or technically complex work that isn't resonating with the audiences who matter most, and you can't quite figure out why.

    • Something has shifted — a funder relationship feels cooler, internal alignment is fraying, a partner is asking harder questions — and the signal is quiet, but you know it's right.

    • A significant moment is approaching: a new strategy, a major publication, a funding conversation, and you want your narrative to be solid before you go public.

    • The organisation has grown and changed, but the way it presents itself hasn't.

    1. Kickoff: We bring the right people into the room, define what we're investigating, and agree on what a useful outcome looks like.

    2. Research and inquiry: I move through the organisation, interviewing key leaders and staff, reviewing existing materials, and auditing the gap between your narrative and the reality it's meant to represent

    3. Working sessions: Two to three sessions punctuate the research phase, keeping you informed and ensuring the inquiry stays focused on what matters most.

    4. Synthesis and presentation: I present findings, name what's underneath them, and open a structured conversation about what comes next.

  • At the end of Wayfinding, you receive a synthesis document built to be used, not filed.

    What it maps

    • Where your narrative and your reality diverge

    • The structural conditions driving your communications challenges

    • What would need to change for things to shift

    • The clearest path forward given your context and constraints

    What it means for you

    • Clarity on what you can credibly claim, and what you can't yet

    • A diagnosis that goes beneath the surface problem

    • A set of prioritized, actionable recommendations

    • A decision-ready framework your leadership can act on

Ground Truthing

A transformation engagement — minimum 6 months

Most organisations that have tried to fix their communications know how this goes: a strategy gets built, documents get written, and then — gradually, quietly — nothing really changes. The strategy lives in a folder, the team reverts to what it knew, and the gap between intention and output persists.

Ground Truthing is built around a different diagnosis: the problem is rarely the strategy or the documents; it's that the organisation hasn't yet developed the internal conditions to sustain them. That's what this engagement addresses: not just what you say, but how your organisation thinks, decides, and moves, so that better communication becomes a capability rather than a one-time output.

Over a minimum of six months, we work through three phases together: building the strategy, embedding it into the organisation's systems and culture, and guiding the team as it translates that strategy into real output. The work is part technical, part adaptive, because lasting change happens at the level of documents and processes, but also at the level of beliefs, behaviours, and habits.

    • You've completed Wayfinding and are ready to act on what the diagnosis revealed.

    • You've tried to implement a communications strategy before, and watched it not stick.

    • You know what needs to change, but can't get the organisation to move, and the resistance is real even when it's quiet.

    • You're running a lean team and don't want to increase headcount, but need senior strategic expertise embedded in the organisation to drive the work forward.

    1. Orient: We gather the insights needed to build your strategy and develop the frameworks your organisation will work from. Nothing advances without your leadership's sign-off.

    2. Build: The strategy becomes infrastructure: guidelines, workflows, decision chains, governance frameworks. Alongside the technical work, we address the adaptive layer: the training, workshops, and change management that ensure the strategy gets embedded into the organisation's culture, not just its filing system.

    3. Translate: I guide your team as it produces the communications your strategy calls for, advising across leadership and execution and overseeing production directly where needed.

    Most clients choose to continue beyond the initial engagement, retaining access to senior strategic counsel as the organisation moves forward with its new capabilities.

  • The shape of a Ground Truthing engagement is determined at the outset, based on what your organisation actually needs. Outputs vary, but they tend to fall into three categories:

    Strategic foundations

    • Communications, narrative, or content strategy;

    • Thought leadership frameworks;

    • Brand, editorial, or content guidelines.

    Systems and infrastructure

    • Workflows and team processes;

    • Governance frameworks and decision rules;

    • Tech stack organisation and implementation.

    Capability and leadership

    • Team training and coaching;

    • Leadership advisory on communications decisions;

    • Oversight of key publications or campaigns.

How I work

The relationship is closer to trusted advisor than service provider. Before engaging, I do significant homework across the organisation, its stakeholders, its sector, and the broader context, because the quality of my counsel depends on the quality of my preparation. When I take a contrarian position, I explain the reasoning, not because I expect agreement but because I want the team to understand the thinking well enough to carry it forward.

One thing I've observed repeatedly is that leaders often underestimate how much the perspectives of their stakeholders shape the communications problem: what they need, how they make decisions, where their priorities actually sit. Mapping that carefully, and building from shared values rather than assumed alignment, is consistently where the most useful work happens.

Engagements follow a work plan but stay responsive to what emerges. The pace varies: concentrated around workshops or key decisions, slower and more iterative in between. The most important issue is rarely the one we started with.

I work best with clients who are present in the process: who communicate openly, who are willing to sit with findings that complicate the picture, and who want to understand the reasoning behind recommendations, not just receive them.

  • No, and the difference matters. Agencies are built for execution: campaigns, content, media relations, crisis response. That's valuable work, but it operates downstream of the decisions that determine whether your communications will hold. Delfina works upstream, at the level of governance and organisational decision-making, to build the strategic foundations that make execution coherent. If your communications difficulty is actually a governance problem in disguise (and it usually is) no amount of good messaging will resolve it.

  • It depends on what kind of strategy you have in mind. Organisational strategy consultants typically bring general frameworks to business problems; brand and communications consultants typically work within a defined creative or messaging brief. Delfina sits at the intersection of both, and adds a third dimension that neither usually covers: the governance and stakeholder dynamics specific to high-stakes or contested communications decisions. That kind of work requires fluency across communications, brand, and organisational decision-making, because the gap between those functions is precisely where things tend to break down. Advisors who operate only on one side of that gap tend to produce solutions that work in theory but fail under pressure.

  • Internal teams, even lean ones, are rarely positioned to do this work alone. Not because they lack capability, but because high-stakes communications work requires operating across functions and hierarchies in ways that are structurally difficult from inside. Delfina works alongside your existing team, not instead of it. On longer engagements, this sometimes means taking a senior fractional role to create the authority needed to work cross-functionally, bridging the gaps between communications, leadership, legal, and other functions that typically operate in silos. For organisations that need serious strategic capability without a permanent hire, that model tends to work well.

  • There isn't one, which is part of what makes it worth understanding early. Some organisations come to this work proactively, at a moment of strategic clarity: before a difficult decision, a public commitment, or a period of increased scrutiny. Others arrive mid-crisis, needing to think clearly under pressure. Others come in the aftermath, when the immediate moment has passed but trust has been damaged and resilience needs rebuilding. Each entry point is legitimate, and the work looks somewhat different depending on where you're starting from. What doesn't change is the underlying logic: communications problems that run deeper than the message require more than a messaging fix.

  • Delfina is remote-first and works with organisations across geographies. In-person engagement is available for clients where proximity matters, and travel is part of the practice. High-stakes communications decisions don't respect borders; neither does the experience behind them.

Frequently asked questions

Start with a conversation

If something on this page has named what your organisation is facing, the right next step is a focused conversation about where you are, what you're navigating, and whether this work is the right fit. There's no obligation beyond the conversation itself.

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