Services — Science + Story

Wanted: Research leaders with world-changing insights.

Those insights are years ahead of the rest of the world–and you want the world to catch up. How do you start? Become a public expert.

Are you a public expert? Here’s a test.

You walk into important rooms all the time — Zoom or real. Does someone in those rooms invariably say to you in front of everyone: “I love your thinking. I drop everything else when you’ve got something new out.”

If not: Your thinking isn’t public enough. Isn’t part of an ecosystem that shares it enough.

Another test: How often does someone say to you: “You (or your organization) are the clear leader in X”?

If “not often enough,” your story — the positioning and narrative of what your organization’s public expertise provides the world — isn’t working.

When your thinking isn’t public enough — and when your story doesn’t work — your ideas and solutions (and those of your organization) fade into the background. You become invisible.

If that worries you, we should work together.

Public Expert Strategic Advisory is my cornerstone service. It delivers my concentrated powers — developed over 25 years working with researchers and other public experts — to build your new identity and narrative as a public expert. The core engagement lasts 12 months, because it takes that long to build not just the foundational strategies, but to integrate them into your busy life as a research leader.
We first build your foundation as a public expert: Together we develop your new positioning, strategic story, content strategy and ecosystem strategy — based on my research, a competitive analysis, my conversations with you and your stakeholders, my narrative magic and road testing of our first drafts.
This foundational work takes between 3-6 months. It’s a roadmap to impact, through you becoming a public expert.
I then advise you for the remainder of the engagement as you implement your new identity and story, build your public expert ecosystem and launch your ideas into the world across all your channels. If we agree, we can extend this advisory if necessary. I’m honored to have a number of long-term clients who trust my counsel and continue to see our work pay dividends in increased sales and collaborations as well as broader recognition and understanding of their research and expertise.
If you’re an academic who’s interested in developing into a public expert but who isn’t affiliated with a research center that could fund that work, the Public Expert Cohort engagement could be for you.

The cohort works like this: A group of six to eight scholars and I meet monthly over Zoom and asynchronously over Slack, creating a crucible over the cohort’s eight-month term for rapidly improving the skills, habits and content each member needs to effectively engage as experts with non-expert audiences. Every month, the group helps one member through a focus session on one or more of their particular public expert challenges; each member will also meet with me for three 1:1 sessions during the course for individual counsel.
If you’re interested in joining the next cohort, please fill out the contact form below.
You’ve been asked to give a talk to hundreds of non-experts—and you’re not sure if your subject will interest any of them.
A journal editor calls and asks you to submit an opinion piece timed for an important event—but you’re having trouble narrowing the focus down.
You want a website—you think. But you’re not sure what your goals should be, and you don’t want to spend a lot of money until you’re sure.
I’ve spent my career helping research leaders tackle these and similar hairy, urgent public expert challenges. I’m now offering you the benefit of that experience and counsel through a 1:1 call. Ideally, we’ll try to get to the best answer or answers for your situation on the call.
But the 1:1 Call will always give you a clear framework for making this decision and thinking about similar ones moving forward.
If you’re interested in a call with me, please fill out the contact form below with a brief description of your challenge and we’ll take it out from there.