Your strategic partner for spotlight moments

At Soutenu Strategic Communications, we help you navigate pressure situations with poise, intention, and precision. We are built for bold moves and bring control to tough situations with artistry and grace. We help you turn from trepidation to strength in the face of chaos and controversy.  

Soutenu means “sustained” and “supported” in the strength, discipline, and artistry of ballet. Executed with steadiness and grace from firm footing, a dancer emerges from a soutenu with a more powerful, assured stance, exuding poise and confidence—just like you will from your business challenges with our strategic guidance.

When it matters, cut through the noise to find your light with Soutenu Strategic Communications.

Our specialties

  • Whether you are trying to stay under the radar or make waves, the ever-changing political, business, and economic climates can make even the strongest brands question their adaptability.

    Competitive pressures and changing technology, like AI advancements, can challenge how you show up in the market to get ahead.

    Our strategic guidance gives you confidence in positioning your organization, executives, products, and/or business unit amidst challenging business pressures.

  • What if the internet goes out during your demo-heavy tech sales conference? What if there is an active shooter threat at your event venue? What if protesters disrupt your keynote speeches?

    Do you know what to do?

     We’ve handled each one of these scenarios and more at major industry events, keeping them out of the news and attendee spirit high.

     We can help you be ready for and smoothly manage any threatened disruptions to your event’s carefully cultivated media and attendee experience.  

    • Scenario planning maps out every possible threat and assigns step-by-step instructions to seamlessly manage issues in the moment

    • Tabletop exercises provide coordination practice for all teams necessary to manage a crisis (security, IT, marketing, legal, communications, etc.)

    • Onsite support creates peace of mind by giving you an expert there in the midst of the madness

  • Is your business preparing a major announcement that must go well, especially considering its impact on what investors, regulators, customers, partners, and employees think of the news? 

    We evaluate risk in your coming announcement and develop strategies to help you make sure they go smoothly and generate great support among your key audiences, including

    • Leadership changes

    • M&A activity

    • Product launches

    • Layoffs

    • Changes in business direction

  • If a business-changing disaster struck tomorrow, would you be ready?

     We make sure you are not only prepared for whatever might come but have solid strategies to weather the impact unscathed.

    • Crisis scenario audits help you understand what threats your business faces

    • Documented crisis plans make sure everyone in the company knows who needs to be activated during a crisis, what their role is, and decision protocols—from receptionists to client relationship managers to the CEO

    • Scenario playbooks provide step-by-step, explicit instructions for what to do when threats become reality so the critical thinking is already done and you can focus on action, immediately

    • Crisis trainings help your team practice and prepare before it’s all on the line

Why you should trust us

Our people have done this all before, and for some of the biggest brands. We have a proven history of managing some of the thorniest moments for companies, so we know what works to let you claim your spotlight moments from the surest footing.

Kristin Brown

Founder, CEO

Kristin Brown has well over 20 years of experience leading communications strategy for companies making big, bold moves. She brings to every engagement a deep understanding of how to shape public perception, drive trust, and manage complexity at the highest levels.

At Amazon Web Services, Kristin led crisis and issues communications for all 200+ technology services. She guided executives including Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, and Jeff Bezos through some of the most high-profile and precedent-setting challenges in the industry, from establishing hard-fought trust in AI and ML services like facial recognition and LLMs and driving understanding and adoption of AI ethics and responsible use to protecting AWS’s reputation in cybersecurity and mitigating reputational damage during high-profile service disruptions affecting widespread internet access and other global news-making events.

With a keen awareness of the critical role communications plays in solving business challenges, Kristin has run numerous perception-shaping campaigns to influence key decision makers and achieve meaningful business results. She helped position AT&T for regulatory approval for business acquisitions and favorable conditions in spectrum auctions and worked to shape inside-Washington perspective to protect a beleaguered foreign telecom hardware manufacturer. After Rwanda’s devastating genocide, Kristin led a successful campaign to reposition Rwanda’s global reputation to attract Western business investment and rebuild the country. She also helped to advance the Kingdom of Jordan’s reputation in the US to facilitate critical aid relations. And, she’s positioned several companies’ M&A activity to achieve favorable investor sentiment as well as promote employee perception to effectively retain critical talent.

When John Deere needed to change their reputation and claim positioning as a technology leader to gain confidence from investors and technology recruits, Kristin and her team more than delivered. The dresses-and-heels, city girl dug in (pun intended) and helped open the business and technology world’s eyes to the advanced technologies in Deere’s farm equipment. As part of a robust image transformation campaign that realigned Deere’s peer set as not only ag companies but also leading technology innovators like Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet, Kristin and her team created a showstopping debut and subsequent blockbuster storytelling moments at the tech industry’s preeminent showcase, the Consumer Electronics Show. They forever changed perception around Deere and became an aspirational model for other industrial companies with a need to modernize their reputations. Importantly, Deere’s stock price increased 100% under Kristin’s image guidance.

One such company following Deere’s example was CNH (owner of farm equipment brands Case and New Holland and John Deere’s biggest competitor). Kristin built the global technology communications function at CNH, repositioning the company as a leader in autonomy and robotics and transforming the way the company approaches storytelling. Kristin’s work secured a measurable increase in CNH’s stock price and earned placement on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list for Robotics and Engineering.

Kristin has led crisis mitigation and response for countless major, corporate events, including AWS’s premier annual customer event re:Invent, with 51,000 attendees, and each of their smaller regional summits. She partnered closely with critical event function leads including security, legal, and event production to protect attendee and media experience despite issues including public protests, keynote speech disruptions by vocal activists, widespread network connectivity issues, and the threat of an active shooter—and kept them all out of event news coverage. She runs a controlled, well-coordinated process, creating detailed scenario playbooks and tabletop practice sessions rooted in effective preparation for swift, decisive action in the moment.

The best crisis, however, is the one that never happens, and Kristin has helped numerous companies uncover and understand the threats they may face and create positioning strategies to mitigate critical situations before they ever happen. She helps brands prepare and create sound plans for what could be ahead of them so that key audiences not only understand the brand but embrace it.

Grounded in clarity, integrity, and collaboration, Kristin molds reputations to help brands turn skeptics into supporters, overcome high-stakes obstacles, and win when the spotlight is on them and it really matters.