Work & impact

What I have led

Four programs, in two very different institutions, doing the same work: learning what complex new ideas actually mean, finding why they matter, and turning that into alignment, investment, and action.

Case study 01

Building Adobe Research communications from the ground up

The challenge: Adobe Research had no communications practice. Its work in AI, machine learning, computer vision, and graphics had no consistent route to executives, product teams, or the public.
What I led: I joined in 2017 as the organization's founding science writer and built the function from there, becoming Director of Research and Innovation Communications. I wrote and published its first stories on AI, machine learning, computer vision, and graphics, then developed the practice around them.
People and functions involved: Researchers and research leadership, plus partners across marketing, social, talent marketing, PR, legal, design, and product.
The system created: A news site and technical blog, social channels, a video series, and an editorial operating rhythm that made publication repeatable rather than occasional.
Supporting metrics: 37% year-over-year growth in original research news output.
Representative work: Adobe Research news · Selected pieces

Case study 02

Turning emerging AI into executive alignment

The challenge: Generative AI was moving faster than any organization could comfortably absorb. Adobe Research's leadership needed to make the case internally for treating it as a major bet, and to do so while the field was still changing underneath the argument.
What I led: In FY23 I led my team to create eight new high-priority executive presentations, and directed the messaging for keynotes by the VP and Head of Adobe Research. The work required moving at pace through considerable ambiguity, since the subject matter kept shifting as we wrote about it.
The result: Those presentations enabled Adobe Research's VP to advocate for the company's leadership in generative AI, and to persuade executive leadership to increase resources behind it, resulting in multi-million-dollar funding for the work. That investment contributed to major advances in Adobe's AI technologies, including Firefly and Photoshop Generative Fill.
People and functions involved: My communications team, Adobe Research's VP and Head, and Adobe's executive leadership as the audience for the case.
Supporting metrics: Eight new high-priority executive presentations in FY23.

Case study 03

Connecting AI and technology with products and public understanding

What I led: I helped market new research breakthroughs to product teams and other internal stakeholders, and I led the editorial work that carried research technologies to general audiences.
Representative work: This World Photography Day, Adobe Research Maps How Trust Travels with a Photo

Case study 04

Turning interdisciplinary science into a case for major investment

The challenge: Stanford was proposing science that crossed departmental boundaries: biosciences with engineering, chemistry with medicine, neuroscience across the whole university. Donors and institutional leaders considering very large gifts had to understand why work that didn't fit the existing structure was credible, important, and worth funding at institutional scale.
What I led: I created the communications supporting major gifts of $10 million and above for interdisciplinary science and engineering: proposals, articles, newsletters, collateral, communications for senior university leadership, and scripts for short films that I also project-managed. I carried that content through a complex multi-stakeholder review process.
The result: Three institutes came out of this work: Stanford Bio-X, the ChEM-H Institute for Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The campaigns my writing supported raised gifts totalling tens of millions of dollars.
People and functions involved: University leadership, faculty and program directors, development teams, and design and video partners.
The narrative created: I told the story of what interdisciplinary research could do through the people doing it: the researchers, the students, and the discoveries. Subjects ran across the interdisciplinary biosciences, the environment, and the social sciences. The discipline was connecting individual programs to larger institutional and societal opportunity without flattening the science itself.

Selected writing and media

Featured projects with my role described, plus books, philosophy, and appearances.

Writing & Media Get in touch