The Crux of the Story

In our fifty-seventh episode of The Crux, we welcome Marjorie Benzkofer and Cherry Bayer. Marjorie is the Chief Strategy Officer of Fleishman Hillard and Cherry is the Director of Internal Communications at LabCorp. They are both members of Page Up. Marjorie and Cherry will talk with us about a report Page Up published last year, Resilience and Change in a Time of Change: Research Findings on the Transformed Role of Communications. It's an excellent summary of the dynamic forces that are transforming business communications almost on a day-to-day basis.

In our fifty-sixth episode of The Crux, we welcome author and CEO of Dezenhall Resources, Eric Dezenhall. We discuss Eric's point of view on the role of business in society and crisis communications in an era of turmoil, acrimony, and collapsing trust in the media.

In our fifty-fifth episode of The Crux, we welcome Kendra Butters, the communications director of the Boston Athletic Association. We discuss Kendra's role and responsibilities and how her team is handling the near-constant turmoil for the crises that were brought upon the association by the pandemic.

In our fifty-fourth episode of The Crux, we welcome Mark Schaefer, COO of B Squared Media. Mark is also a faculty member at Rutgers University and an author. We discuss with him his latest book, Cumulative Advantage: How to Build Momentum for your Ideas, Business and Life Against All Odds.

In our fifty-third episode of The Crux, we welcome Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of GE and today a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates and instructor at the Stanford Global School of Business. Jeff has a new book, HOT SEAT: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company. We discuss the role communications and culture played in Jeff's tenure at GE and how leaders should be thinking about those topics today.

In our fifty-second episode of The Crux, we welcome Jolie Hunt, CEO and founder of Hunt and Gather. We discuss her lessons learnt from holding senior titles at a young age, how the move to digitized relationships has changed influencer ideologies, and how companies should adapt to social movements such as showing their support against racism.

In our fifty-first episode of The Crux, we welcome David Murray, author of An Effort To Understand: Hearing One Another (and Ourselves) in a Nation Cracked in Half. We discuss communicating more honestly with ourselves, how Americans can focus more on what we have in common, rather than our differences, the medias contribution to the polarization that we see today in the U.S., and David shares the meaning of "Words Hold People Together," one of the essays featured in the book.

In our fiftieth episode of The Crux, we welcome Frank Figliuzzi, author of The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence. We discuss what led Frank to write his book, the values of the FBI and how they can be applied to other organizations, the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and how the FBI can continue to be effective in the current environment.

In our forty-ninth episode of The Crux, we welcome Eric Handler, Vice President of communications at the YES Network. We discuss what it is like to lead a communications team in the most competitive sports market in the world, how COVID changed his job over the last year, and how sports networks have handled the growing activism in nearly every aspect of life.

In our forty-eighth episode of The Crux, we welcome Dean Acosta, senior vice president and CCO of Lockheed Martin. We discuss NASA's Perseverance rover, which Lockheed Martin had a hand in, how being a journalist helped Dean both at NASA and with his role today, the digital-first approach, change management, and Dean's journey to becoming CCO of Lockheed Martin.