Internal Communications Strategist

Most enterprise messages land with leadership and stop there. I build the systems that get them the rest of the way.

15 years building communications infrastructure at Fortune 500 companies through M&A, reorgs, workforce reductions, and sustained transformation. Now bringing that practice to organizations that need it most.

15+
Years in enterprise comms
50
eNPS points recovered post-RIF
8k
Employees integrated, M&A
Heather Vaughn
"Most organizations communicate. Very few build the infrastructure to make it land."
Experience at
Viasat T-Mobile Microsoft MultiCare
About

Trust doesn't erode all at once. It erodes at every handoff.

I've spent 15 years inside some of the most complex communication environments in corporate America — M&A integrations, multi-wave RIFs, sustained reorgs, leadership transitions. What I've learned is that communication failure is almost never a writing problem. It's a systems problem.

Messages get diluted, delayed, and dropped because the infrastructure that should carry them doesn't exist. Managers receive a corporate announcement and are expected to lead a team conversation with no preparation. Comms teams triage by instinct because there's no framework for defending prioritization decisions. Employees feel uninformed not because leadership doesn't communicate, but because the last mile never closes.

I build the infrastructure that closes it. And I've started encoding that expertise into tools so it can scale beyond what any one person can do manually.

Work with me →
The manager is the medium.

No message survives a cascade intact unless managers are prepared to carry it. Most aren't — not because they don't care, but because the system doesn't support them.

Engagement metrics aren't trust metrics.

Open rates and click-throughs measure activity. They don't measure whether employees believe what they're reading or trust the people saying it.

Prioritization is a communications decision.

What gets communicated when, and to whom, shapes the cumulative load employees absorb. That load is invisible in most organizations until it becomes a retention problem.

AI should amplify expertise, not replace it.

The value isn't the automation. It's 15 years of communication judgment encoded into tools any communicator can use.

The Work

A tool suite I built because nothing like it existed.

After 15 years navigating M&A, reorgs, RIFs, and sustained transformation, I kept running into the same gap: the infrastructure to carry communication to the people who needed it most didn't exist. I built manager guides by hand. I defended prioritization decisions with no framework. I watched trust erode at every handoff point and had no tool to show leadership what was happening or why. So I built one. Then another. The Cascade Suite is a proprietary system — designed, developed, and owned by me — that you won't find anywhere else. It encodes what I've learned about where enterprise communication breaks down and what it takes to fix it.

The organizing principle
"Trust erodes at every handoff point in the message chain. Every tool in this suite targets one of those points — because I've lived inside each of them."
Tool 01
Cascade
Helps managers prepare to cascade enterprise messages to their teams. Takes any corporate announcement and generates a plain-language summary, ranked questions employees will ask, and a ready-to-run huddle playbook.
● Live View tool →
Tool 02
Prioritization Engine
Scores communication requests against a dynamic model of organizational reality. Surfaces reputational risk, audience load, and time sensitivity. Gives comms leaders a defensible prioritization record over time.
● Live View tool →
Tool 03
Quarterly Dashboard
The output layer of the Prioritization Engine. Surfaces patterns across the queue over time — what types of requests dominated, which audiences absorbed the most load, and what the data says about organizational trust trajectory.
In design
Tool 04
Measurement Layer
Closes the feedback loop between communication output and trust trajectory. Moves measurement from activity proxies to defensible trust signals: manager confidence scores, clarity pulses, and verbatim sentiment shift.
Planned
This is a proprietary methodology, not a product you can buy off the shelf. Each client engagement deepens the cross-client data behind the suite — patterns in communication load, trust signals, and audience saturation that no single organization could see on its own. That data asset grows with every engagement.
Thinking

Playbooks built from the inside

These aren't frameworks assembled from theory. They're documentation of what I've watched fail — and what I've built to replace it — across more than a decade of high-stakes organizational change.

Playbook
M&A Integration Communications

What actually breaks during an integration isn't the announcement. It's the six months after it — when employees are waiting for certainty that isn't coming and managers are expected to hold the room without answers. This playbook maps the communication architecture that keeps trust intact through that window.

M&A Change management Trust architecture Manager enablement
Get the playbook →
Playbook
IC Measurement That Actually Measures Trust

Most communications measurement tells you what people opened, not what they believed. This playbook builds a defensible measurement stack from the ground up — manager confidence scores, clarity micro-pulses, town hall question analysis, and voluntary attrition as a lagging trust signal.

Measurement Trust signals Employee listening IC strategy
Get the playbook →
Experience

What I've built, and where

Viasat
2020 – Present
Head of Internal Communications

Led enterprise communications through one of the most sustained transformation periods in Viasat's history — multiple M&A transactions, global workforce integration, reorg, and multi-year change. Built and maintained employee trust and leadership credibility under conditions of high change fatigue.

Designed and executed a trust restoration strategy following a major reorg and RIF, recovering 50 eNPS points while navigating continued transformation.
Led M&A communications for Viasat's largest-ever acquisition, integrating an ~8,000-employee global workforce.
Built and led a global communications team of 7, including employer brand oversight for 4 years.
Scaled enterprise communications from a single wiki to a full digital ecosystem, including two complete intranet builds.
Microsoft
2019 – 2021
Communications Manager (via Simplicity Consulting)

Supported employee communications for Xbox's Gaming for Everyone initiative. Launched an inclusive design website for employees, partners, and developers. Managed a monthly global newsletter and owned SharePoint sites, internal social channels, and digital content strategy.

T-Mobile
2016 – 2019
Internal Communications Manager, Employee Campaigns

Built enterprise communications infrastructure and governance for a 66,000-person workforce.

Designed and launched a cross-organizational communications partner program connecting central and embedded communicators across the enterprise.
Diagnosed and solved a structural fragmentation problem, building a prioritization infrastructure that reduced message duplication.
The Fearey Group
2015 – 2016
Account Supervisor

Supervised 5+ client accounts across healthcare, finance, and technology, owning media relations, social media, and internal communications plans for each.

Led development of the agency's strategic 3-year business plan, including vision, objectives, metrics, risk assessment, and implementation timeline.
Identified and pursued new business leads and developed proposals, building agency revenue across multiple industries.
MultiCare Health System
2012 – 2014
Sr. Internal Communications Specialist

Developed and executed internal communications strategy across a 10,000+ employee health system. Served as trusted advisor to senior leaders during periods of heightened employee risk and reputational sensitivity.

CHI Franciscan Health System
Jan – Nov 2012
Internal Communications Specialist
Writer and editor for five concurrent employee and physician newsletters, managing intranet with breaking news, features, and calendar content.
Directed and produced COO videocasts and other executive-level content for a large regional health system.
WE Worldwide
2007 – 2011
Senior Account Executive, Microsoft Accounts

Lead editor of the Microsoft News Agenda, distributed to all global Microsoft employees. Supported top-level executive communications and developed crisis communications plans across media and analyst relations.

What People Say

From the people I've worked with

Heather has done an outstanding job providing excellent communications to the entire Viasat team regarding ViaSat-3 Flight 1 over many months. She coordinated interviews, all hands, and written updates, demonstrating exceptional flexibility in adapting to the challenges of launching satellites. Thanks to Heather for her patience, tireless efforts, and flexibility.
Jim Gosnell
Vice President, Viasat
Thank you, Heather, for all the support you provide Viasat. Not only during a tough situation, but for always being a trusted partner who always does a good job.
Amy Brown
Sr. Director, Viasat
Heather is an exceptional professional who can hit the ground running on a new business, build great client relationships and collaborate successfully with colleagues. Her ability to drive results across multiple programs simultaneously makes her an asset to any team.
Laurinda Hoffman
Vice President, Waggener Edstrom
Contact

Let's talk about what you're navigating.

I work with communications leaders and CHROs at organizations going through the kinds of change where getting communication right is the difference between trust holding and trust breaking. If that's where you are, I'd like to hear about it.