I Am Austin Woman: Kathleen Lucente on building Red Fan, leading through the hard moments, and what comes next
Red Fan Communications founder and CEO Kathleen Lucente was named the I AM AUSTIN WOMAN honoree at this month’s Women’s Way Award Celebration by Austin Woman Magazine. We sat down with Kathleen to talk about the journey, the people, and the city that made it possible. Q: Tell us about Red Fan and what makes […]
Why boards keep passing over their best technical leaders
As seen in Forbes I’ve spent 30 years helping engineers, CTOs, and founders of tech companies step into their confident communicator selves—transformations that changed their careers. It started at EDN, where I edited technical articles written by engineers for engineers. That’s where I learned something that’s guided everything since: brilliance nobody understands is brilliance that […]
The question every CEO is asking and why most CMOs still can’t answer it.
As seen in Fast Company. Recently I was in several CMO meetings. The same stat came up each time. By the time we’d talked it through, the conversation had shifted from PR strategy to something much bigger. According to Muck Rack’s “What Is AI Reading?” report, which analyzed more than one million links cited by leading AI models, […]
Three Weeks Isn’t Enough Time For An M&A Communications Strategy
As seen in Forbes. The phone rings. “The deal closes in three weeks.” That’s the whole brief. The lawyers have had months. The bankers have had months. The communications function just learned it has a seat at the table, and the table is already being cleared. Half the time, the chief marketing officer is the […]
Why the Biggest Agency Merger in a Decade Is Happening at the Worst Possible Time
I’ve managed agencies all over the world — running PR across Asia Pacific for JPMorgan Chase, picking partners for LabMorgan spin-offs, managing comms at IBM Research. Every one of those situations had a conventional answer: go with the big name, optimize for scale and prioritize efficiency. But every instinct I’d built told me to look […]
The 4 Clocks of M&A Communications: Why Smart Acquirers Treat Comms as Deal Infrastructure
At 6 a.m., Bloomberg Media called me in Hong Kong to ask about layoffs I didn’t know were happening. I was brand new to my role leading communications for JPMorganChase across the Asia-Pacific region. The CEO and chief people officer were new. Both came from firms without a culture of early-looping the communications team into […]
The Laziest Revenue And Reputation-Killing Mistake In B2B Marketing
As seen in Fast Company. Not every executive should be positioned as a thought leader. Companies want their leadership to be visible. They want a bench of voices representing the brand. But after 18 years of building executive communications programs for B2B technology companies, I’ve watched millions wasted on a fundamental confusion: the difference between […]
The GEO Revolution in B2B Marketing
A colleague recently shared a story that stopped me cold. A mid-market bank CEO was evaluating fraud prevention solutions. Rather than Googling, he asked ChatGPT to recommend the top three providers for community banking. The AI delivered three names. My colleague’s company, despite $2M in annual content marketing and a sales team of twelve, wasn’t […]
The Listening Tour Strategy: Why Your Most Valuable Business Asset Can’t Be Automated
I spent last night at a vinyl listening party—no screens, no distractions, just Erin Ivey on stage with her producer and fellow musician in an intimate room. We listened to her new album Souvenir the way it was meant to be heard: eyes closed, fully present, absorbing not just the songs but the stories behind […]