We were delighted to welcome Stephanie Craig on board to be our VP of Consulting this August. This is the first of a series of posts in which Stephanie reflects on her first 60 days, shares her thoughts on crises, and, in this case, explains why she left her own successful practice to join Kith.
Anyone who has started their own company knows that there are long nights, no weekends and more than one gray hair. You must believe wholeheartedly in what you are doing because you can sometimes be standing there alone and there is more than one sleepless night.
Putting your heart and soul into something makes the decision to give it up quite easy. Emphatically NO. Why would I give up what I have built?
There is an exception — the opportunity to exponentially level up. That is what joining Kith was about for me.
Joining the experts. There is no more universally elite group of crisis advisors than at Kith. The talent at Kith has worked at the highest echelons of the private and public sector around the world. One expert is an expert, a group is a force.
That is what Kith is — a force. But the seeds of where we are, were planted a while ago.
Bill Coletti and I have worked together before at a little, mighty firm that became a behemoth. Bill stayed; I moved on to the tech world and specialized in turnarounds. But for both of us, our love is crisis, which is how we ended up here.
As we kept in touch over the years, we realized that we shared a common philosophy for crisis management — if we do our jobs right and prepare our clients expertly, we can minimize, if not downright prevent damage from reputational crises.
But the how we do things at Kith is much more deeply rooted in why. And the “why” is why I am here.
Our Why
I’ve known many consultants who seem to bemoan working with clients. We’re the opposite. We love working with clients. We believe we can help not only with the crisis at hand but also with personal and professional development. You are good, we make you better (first person that emails me with the movie reference gets a prize!)
We firmly believe that our clients should be more equipped to handle and prevent crisis when we are done than when we started. And that is our intention.
We become invested in our clients well-being both personally and professionally. We want you to be successful. We work WITH you to create the blueprint to your crisis readiness or, as we call it, to become Reputation Resilient.
We are building our own unique system that is a collection of our expertise because we are always looking to be better; to serve you better. We are always curious and interested in leveling up. One of my whys is exactly this, why be an expert on your own when you can work with a team of experts in your field?
What we don’t want: we don’t want to supplant your communications team or your trusted PR agency; we do not work with our clients to secure long-term consulting contracts.
Our values are clearly stated even in the name of our firm. Kith means “a cadre of peers who shape opinions and attitudes while instilling sophisticated habits for action” and we live it.
And here is the big “why”: we are committed to doing the right thing in all situations, and make client service a top priority. We demonstrate this at every interaction with effort, collaboration and generosity.
That generosity of spirit and expertise extends beyond our clients to our communities. Mine is directed towards ending ALS and advancing equity for women. Each of my teammates has their own. We are passionate about being generous.
Kith is different; that is why I’m here. The “why” I joined Kith is exactly the reason we should work together.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to bring you along with me on the journey of learning Kith. Please join me.
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
