There is a moment — every military public affairs officer knows it — when a senior leader turns to you and says, "I need to talk to these people, and I need to get it right." The stakes vary. Sometimes it is a change-of-command ceremony. Sometimes it is a casualty notification to a battalion. Sometimes it is a policy announcement that will shape the lives of thousands.
In each case, you have one job: make sure the leader's message lands. Not just the words. The intent. The credibility. The human connection that earns trust from an audience that has every reason to be skeptical.
I spent 25 years in that seat. As a Marine Corps Public Affairs Officer, I served as Chief of Public Affairs for Detainee Operations, Multi-National Forces Iraq; as Deputy and Director of Public Affairs at Headquarters US Forces Japan; and as Director of Public Affairs on Guam — advising senior leaders across the Department of Defense in environments where getting the message wrong had real, measurable consequences. When I transitioned to federal civilian service, I supported the military's electronic health record deployment at the Defense Health Agency — one of the largest IT modernization efforts in federal history — and earned a Graduate Certificate in Change Leadership from Cornell University. That training formalized what two decades in uniform had already taught me: you cannot communicate your way through a transformation if you do not understand the mechanics of change itself. I now serve as Executive Speechwriter for the VA Secretary and Deputy Secretary and lead ReadyRoom, a consultancy serving federal leaders, healthcare executives, and Veteran-serving organizations.
Here is what those 25 years taught me.
1. The audience does not owe you their attention
In the Marine Corps, I learned this lesson early. A formation full of Marines standing at parade rest may look attentive, but their minds are already calculating how long until chow. A Congressional staffer sitting in a hearing room may be physically present, but they are scanning the next briefing binder.
Strategic communications taught me that attention is earned in the first 30 seconds — or it is lost entirely. Every speech, every policy brief, every leadership message has to answer one question immediately: Why should I care about this right now?
This is where most organizational messaging fails. Leaders lead with preamble. They open with organizational history. They start with what matters to them instead of what matters to the audience. In the military, we called that "burying the lead." In executive communications, it is the single most common mistake I see — and the easiest to fix.
2. Clarity is a form of respect
If there is one thing the military drills into you, it is this: be clear. An ambiguous operations order gets people killed. An unclear commander's intent creates confusion across an entire battlespace.
The same principle applies to civilian leadership communications, even when the stakes are different. When a VA hospital director announces a new patient-flow policy, ambiguity does not just confuse staff — it erodes trust. When a federal agency head testifies before Congress with equivocal language, the audience does not hear nuance. They hear evasion.
Clarity is not about simplification. It is about precision. Say exactly what you mean. Say it in the language your audience uses. Then stop talking.
I have written communications for audiences ranging from a squad of 13 Marines to all-hands formations of several thousand. The scale changes, but the principle does not: if people have to work to decode your message, you have already lost them.
3. Every message is a trust transaction
As Chief of Public Affairs for Detainee Operations, Multi-National Forces Iraq, I fielded questions from media organizations around the world — all scrutinizing how US forces were handling the detention of insurgents and combatants. My mission was to ensure the global media environment understood that US forces were conducting detainee operations in the most humane and safe manner possible — so that our forces and allies could help Iraqis rebuild their country without these dangerous and disruptive actors undermining the effort. This was not domestic press relations. It was global-level strategic communications, where a single miscommunication could hand adversaries a propaganda win, escalate tensions, or erode the international credibility of the entire mission. That experience taught me something that shapes every engagement I take on today: every piece of leadership communication is either building trust or spending it.
Most leaders do not think about their communications in those terms. They think in terms of information transfer — getting the message out, checking the box, informing the workforce. But audiences do not receive messages as neutral data. They receive them as signals. Signals about whether leadership is transparent, competent, and credible.
A change-management memo that leads with process instead of people signals that leadership cares more about compliance than culture. A crisis statement that buries the timeline signals something to hide. These are not messaging problems. They are trust problems. I studied this intersection formally through Cornell's Change Leadership program, and I witnessed it firsthand during the Defense Health Agency's electronic health record rollout: when leaders treat organizational change as a logistics problem instead of a human one, even the most polished messaging falls flat. The discipline of change leadership — understanding resistance, building coalitions, sequencing communications to match where people actually are in the change curve — is what separates communications that inform from communications that move.
4. Know your terrain before you write a word
Every Marine officer learns terrain analysis — studying the ground before committing to a plan. In strategic communications, the "terrain" is your stakeholder environment: who your audiences are, what they already believe, what they are afraid of, and what they need to hear versus what they want to hear.
When I served in Tokyo as Deputy and Director of Public Affairs at Headquarters US Forces Japan, communications had to account for cultural context that most American communicators would miss entirely. A direct, assertive tone that works in a Pentagon briefing room can land very differently in an intergovernmental setting — and our audiences expected more than talking points.
One of the most distinctive strategic communications challenges I led in Tokyo was designing a campaign to commemorate the anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Alliance. This was not a standard press release or ceremony program. The centerpiece was a manga publication about the alliance partnership — a medium with deep cultural resonance in Japan — that told the story of seven decades of bilateral cooperation in a format that reached Japanese audiences in a way formal government communications never could. That project required understanding not just language, but cultural narrative, history, and the symbols that carry meaning in a Japanese context. You do not produce a manga about mutual defense from a Pentagon template. You produce it from proximity, curiosity, and genuine respect for your audience.
As Director of Public Affairs on Guam, the terrain was different but the challenge was the same. My mission was to communicate and educate the people of Guam and the entire Mariana Islands on the importance of the Department of Defense expanding the Marine Corps footprint on the island and establishing live-fire training ranges throughout the region. This was community-facing strategic communications — not press releases, but a sustained series of townhall meetings and unique community relations engagements designed to build understanding, trust, and genuine support for a major DoD expansion. The people of Guam have a complex and deeply personal relationship with the U.S. military presence on their island. Earning their understanding required showing up, listening, and communicating in a way that respected that history while making an honest case for the mission ahead.
This is directly transferable to civilian leadership messaging. A Veteran-serving nonprofit communicating to both Veterans and Congress has to speak two languages — one of lived experience and one of policy impact. A healthcare executive communicating to both frontline clinicians and a hospital board needs messages that resonate at different altitudes of abstraction.
The communicators who fail are the ones who write for themselves. The ones who succeed write for the terrain.
5. Strategy is not the speech — strategy is what happens before and after
Early in my career, I thought speechwriting was the job. Write the remarks, hand them to the principal, watch them deliver. Done.
I was wrong. The speech is a single node in a larger strategic communications campaign. What the leader says on the podium has to be synchronized with what the press release says, what the internal memo says, what the social media post says, and what every other spokesperson in the organization is going to echo for the next 72 hours.
In military public affairs, this is doctrine — Commander's Communication Synchronization. In the civilian world, it is shockingly rare. I see it constantly: a CEO gives a compelling town hall speech, then the follow-up email contradicts the tone. A federal leader announces a new initiative, but the regional offices never received the talking points.
A great speech with no communications infrastructure around it is a campfire in a windstorm. It looks impressive for a moment, and then it is gone.
ReadyRoom does not just write speeches. We build the strategy around them — because that is where the impact lives.
6. You have to be in the room to understand the room
One of the reasons I created ReadyRoom is that most executive communications consultancies are staffed by people who have never stood in the rooms where their clients operate. They have never briefed a general officer. They have never walked the corridors of a VA medical center. They have never sat in a hearing room while a Congressional member asks a question designed to make your principal fail.
I have done all of those things. Not because I read about them, but because I lived them — across two decades, three international duty stations, and every level of the Department of Defense and Marine Corps chain of command.
That matters because leadership messaging is not just about what you say. It is about understanding the pressure, the politics, and the human dynamics in the room when you say it. You cannot write a credible speech for a VA executive if you do not understand the weight of that institution. You cannot craft Congressional testimony if you have never watched the dynamics of a Senate hearing in person.
Proximity to the mission is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite.
Why this matters now
The healthcare and Veteran-serving sectors are facing an inflection point. Trust in institutions is fragile. The workforce is in flux. Leaders are being asked to communicate more — and more effectively — than at any point in the last generation. And nearly every one of these sectors is simultaneously managing large-scale organizational change: new systems, new structures, new mandates. Communication and change management are not parallel tracks. They are the same track.
But here is the critical difference between civilian leaders in these spaces and the senior officials I supported in uniform: generals and admirals have public affairs shops. They have staffs. They have speechwriters on call, media training programs, and communications infrastructure baked into their budgets. Healthcare executives running non-VA systems, directors of Veteran-serving nonprofits, commercial sector leaders operating in the Veteran space — they carry the same weight of mission, and they do it without a single PAO behind them. Most are drafting their own remarks, revising their own messaging, and hoping it lands.
I started ReadyRoom for them. For the healthcare executive leading a community hospital system that serves a Veteran population but has no federal communications budget. For the director of a Veteran-serving nonprofit who carries the full weight of mission without a staff officer to sharpen the message. For the commercial sector leader who wants to reach and serve Veterans authentically but does not yet speak the language of service. These leaders deserve the same quality of strategic communications support that generals and admirals receive — without needing a federal appointment to access it.
The lessons from over 20 years in uniform are not abstract theories. They are operating principles — tested in environments where the consequences of bad communications were immediate and real. And they translate directly to the work I do today.
I want to be direct about something: I am not just someone who spent a career working alongside Veterans. I am a Disabled Veteran. Service-connected injuries are part of my daily life. When I say that healthcare and Veteran-serving organizations need better communications — that the people running these institutions carry a weight most communicators never feel — I am not speaking as an outside observer. I live what these organizations are supposed to deliver. That is not a credential you earn in a classroom. It is something you carry with you every day.
If you lead an organization that serves others, your words are carrying more weight than you think. Make sure they are ready.