Senior-Led. Outcome-Focused. Scalable by Design.
Senior partners provide strategic direction, oversight, and accountability. Our alliance of experienced communications professionals delivers execution and specialized expertise, scaled deliberately to match scope, pace, and complexity.
Expertise
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Senior-level judgment applied where risk and visibility are highest
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Targeted expertise deployed at moments of consequence
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Depth without permanent overhead
Performance
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Integrated directly into leadership priorities
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Clear accountability from strategy through execution
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Measurable outcomes defined and embedded into every engagement
Scalability
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Capacity calibrated to scope, pace, and complexity
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Expand or contract support without adding permanent headcount
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Senior partners maintain standards and accountability across all contributors
EVOLVE delivers a partner-led communications capability that aligns leadership, scales execution, and drives measurable business value.
Our Partners
EVOLVE partners are senior communications leaders who guide client engagements and remain accountable for quality and outcomes.
Partners bring deep experience across corporate communications, executive messaging, change initiatives, and stakeholder engagement. They work directly with clients to shape strategy, oversee delivery, and ensure communications remain aligned to business priorities.
Partners do not operate as independent silos. They collaborate closely with each other and with EVOLVE’s extended network to ensure consistency, continuity, and clarity across all work.
EVOLVE partners remain actively involved throughout engagements, providing leadership, direction, and accountability regardless of team size or scope.
Michael Clingan
Principal Consultant | Corporate Communications & Stakeholder Strategy
Michael Clingan is a senior strategic corporate communications consultant trusted by executive teams to protect, strengthen, and advance organizational reputation during periods of change, complexity and heightened scrutiny. With more than 25 years of experience advising multinational companies, he works at the intersection of strategy, leadership decision-making and real-world execution.
Michael is known for his ability to operate seamlessly between the boardroom and the work itself. He partners closely with senior leaders and the communications teams that support them, providing clear strategic guidance while also drafting the narratives, messaging, and materials required to execute with confidence. His work spans executive positioning, crisis and issues management, transformation communications, and integrated external and internal communications.
Throughout his career, Michael has supported leaders across energy, manufacturing, and highly regulated environments, including senior roles advising ENGIE North America, ExxonMobil and Shell. He has led communications during major operational shifts, M&A activity, reputation-sensitive incidents, and long-term transformation programs, helping organizations maintain credibility while moving decisively forward.
What distinguishes Michael is his calm, pragmatic approach. He is trusted not only for what he recommends, but for how he works alongside internal teams, strengthening capability, sharpening judgment, and reducing friction rather than adding it. Clients rely on him when stakes are high and clarity matters most.
Susan Cellura
Principal Consultant | Executive, Integrated, and Marketing Communications
Susan Cellura is a senior communications strategist and executive advisor with more than 20 years of experience helping organizations strengthen reputation, clarify their story and communicate effectively with the audiences who matter most.
She has advised CEOs and senior leadership teams on corporate narrative, executive visibility, reputation, organizational communications, media strategy, brand positioning and high-profile business announcements. Her experience spans corporate and executive communications, integrated communications strategy, internal and change communications, thought leadership, media relations, brand and messaging strategy, and stakeholder engagement.
Susan has held communications leadership roles with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Huntsman, Chesapeake Utilities and Utility Global, supporting business transformation, emerging technologies, strategic partnerships, organizational change and reputation-sensitive issues across North America, South America, Europe and Asia.
Known for simplifying complexity and connecting communications strategy to business priorities, Susan brings both senior-level counsel and hands-on execution to organizations navigating change, growth and high-visibility moments.
Tia Smith
Principal Consultant | Transformation and Change Communications
Tia Smith is a transformation and execution alignment consultant who helps leadership teams translate strategic ambition into sustained results. With nearly 20 years of experience supporting enterprise and growth-stage organizations, she works at the intersection of strategy, operating design, and practical execution.
Tia is trusted during periods of complexity when organizations are scaling, integrating, modernizing, or navigating significant change. She brings a systems perspective, aligning people, process, data, and technology so that strategic priorities convert into measurable progress rather than stalled initiatives. Her experience spans organizational and behavioral change, business and digital transformation, governance design, process optimization, and merger integration support.
What distinguishes Tia is her ability to bridge vision and action. She partners closely with leadership teams and operational stakeholders, translating high-level objectives into clear decision frameworks, defined priorities, and disciplined execution plans. Rather than introducing unnecessary layers, she focuses on simplifying complexity, strengthening alignment, and building capability that endures beyond the engagement.
Across Fortune 500 enterprises and small-to-mid-sized organizations alike, Tia is valued for her steady presence, structured thinking, and ability to create forward momentum without disruption. Her work consistently delivers clarity that enables action and execution that sustains impact.
Our Alliances
EVOLVE alliances extend our capability in areas where specialized expertise or scalable support is required.
These alliances are long-standing and proven. EVOLVE partners have worked with these specialists - with many for more than 25 years across multiple organizations, industries, and market conditions. Each alliance is built on trust, performance, and shared standards.
Alliances are integrated into EVOLVE engagements selectively, under partner leadership, when they add clear value to delivery, quality, or speed.
The following capabilities illustrate how EVOLVE applies this alliance model in practice.
Visual Communications Enablement and Design
Complex communications often break down not because of strategy, but because information is hard to absorb, inconsistent, or poorly translated into usable materials.
EVOLVE works with experienced visual communications specialists who support communication execution. These alliances support engagements where ideas, decisions, or changes must be understood quickly and applied consistently across audiences.
EVOLVE partners have worked with these specialists for many years across corporate, change, and stakeholder communications. Visual work is grounded in approved messaging and communication objectives, ensuring materials support execution rather than operate as standalone creative.
Through these alliances, EVOLVE clients can access:
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Visual systems and presentation design
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Executive and board-level materials
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Change and transformation communications visuals
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Infographics and complex information design
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Digital and web-ready communications assets
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Brand-aligned templates and toolkits for internal teams
Visual support is integrated selectively and under partner leadership, ensuring materials reinforce clarity, consistency, and credibility across communications.
These capabilities are applied when visual execution materially improves understanding and adoption, not as default creative production.
Executive and Media Communications Enablement
Clear strategy requires confident delivery. To support leaders in high-stakes moments, EVOLVE partners with specialized communications training firms that focus on real-world performance, not theory.
EVOLVE partners have collaborated with these coaching and training specialists for more than 25 years, working together to prepare leaders for critical moments that require clarity, credibility, and confidence.
Our partners provide on-camera and in-room coaching led by experienced speech coaches, journalists, and investor relations professionals.
This support is practical, direct, and designed to strengthen performance under pressure.
Through these alliances, EVOLVE clients can access:
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Executive communications coaching
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Media and on-camera training
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Presentation and public speaking training
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Stakeholder and internal communications coaching
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Crisis communications preparation
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Investor and financial communications coaching
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Social and digital communications training
These services are integrated into EVOLVE engagements as needed, ensuring leaders are prepared to communicate clearly, confidently, and consistently across audiences and channels.
Scalable Communications Sourcing
EVOLVE scales delivery through experienced communications professionals drawn from our extended network and alliance ecosystem. These practitioners support day-to-day execution when additional capacity or specialized skills are required.
Work is matched deliberately to scope, pace, and complexity. Senior partners remain responsible for direction, standards, and quality, while execution is carried out efficiently by professionals suited to the work.
This approach allows EVOLVE to:
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Scale support without overstaffing
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Maintain consistency and accountability
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Deliver efficiently without adding permanent headcount
Scalable sourcing ensures clients receive the right level of support at the right time, without unnecessary overhead.
Talent staffing is one practical application of EVOLVE’s scalable sourcing model.
Talent Staffing and Sourcing
Finding experienced communications talent has become increasingly difficult, while the cost of slow ramp-up, misalignment, or poor fit continues to rise. Organizations need professionals who can step in quickly, understand the context, and deliver with confidence from day one.
EVOLVE works with proven recruiting and staffing partners who specialize in communications, marketing, and change-related roles. These alliances are long-standing and trusted. EVOLVE partners have worked with these specialists for more than 25 years across multiple organizations, industries, and market cycles, ensuring access to talent that is both capable and aligned.
Rather than treating staffing as a transactional exercise, our partners focus on understanding an organization’s objectives, culture, and communication demands. This ensures talent is not only capable on paper, but effective in practice.
Trish Ruff-Cunningham
Alliance | Talent Staffing and Sourcing Lead
Trish Ruff-Cunningham brings more than 20 years of recruiting experience and 35 years in business to her work, and her career reflects a deep understanding that hiring is ultimately about people. She has supported global enterprises, high-growth companies, and mission-driven organizations, always beginning by learning how a team operates, what it values, and where it needs to grow. Leaders trust her ability to see the full picture quickly and translate business pressures into clear, workable talent strategies.
Once engaged, Trish guides the entire recruiting process with a calm and steady presence. She helps define roles with accuracy, shapes compelling job narratives, and engages candidates in a way that is honest, respectful, and informative. Hiring teams receive consistent insights and recommendations that help them make confident decisions. Her approach brings both clarity and momentum to even the most complex searches.
Trish adapts her style to what each organization needs. She can step in as fractional leadership, run project-based searches with urgency, or partner seamlessly with internal teams when discretion is essential. No matter the setting, she brings discipline, focus, and a process that reflects well on the employer brand. Her work consistently turns uncertainty into direction and fragmented efforts into a unified hiring strategy.
At the center of her partnerships is trust. Clients rely on Trish for her good judgment, her candor, and her ability to deliver talent that makes a meaningful and lasting impact. She carries each engagement from beginning to end with accountability and care, strengthening the organization long after the search is complete.