Develop your story
You’re the expert. Together we will explore why your work matters, and to whom, so it has real impact.
When just doing the work isn’t enough
I help experts communicate with confidence & clarity.
I work with research-driven organizations at the moment they need communications leadership — before the first full-time hire, or alongside the team you have. Together we’ll develop your story, find your medium, and build systems you can run without me.
Worked with
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Director of Scholarly Communications for Elsevier, 2013–2021. Read the case study of the Reproducibility Initiative.
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Quora’s first Head of Communications. Launched the creator program, growing it to $1.4M ARR. Launched Poe, a unified platform for engaging with the latest AI models (10M downloads).
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Launched safety ratings of AI companies and contributed technical writing.
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Developed core messaging and built a rapid response framework. Grew inbound media requests 50% and doubled the pitch hit rate.
The approach
Three things we’ll build together
Find your medium
Some stories are best straight from the source, some go further when they’re carried by a trusted messenger. Either way, the integrity of the work is non-negotiable.
Build sustainable systems
Media monitoring, rapid response, and content pipelines are how we’ll keep the message salient in today’s fractured attention economy.
Depending on what your communications function needs first, an engagement can cover executive coaching, public speaking and media training, content strategy, PR, and crisis response.
About
Change happens through shared understanding
I started on your side of the table, as a researcher — a PhD in biomedical science from Tulane. Building Mendeley’s global research community showed me how ideas spread among experts. Eight years as Elsevier’s Director of Scholarly Communications, then a run as Quora’s first Head of Communications, showed me how organizations earn trust at scale.
Through all of it, one lesson held: change doesn’t happen unilaterally. It happens through shared understanding — between leadership, teams, stakeholders, and the public. I’ve run the communications function at global scale. Now I build it for organizations that aren’t ready to staff it.
— William Gunn
Writing
Recent writing
- AI-generated systematic reviews – are they possible? Weighing whether large language models can reliably synthesize and evaluate scientific literature to the standard a systematic review demands. May 2025
- AI and Bioterrorism: Risks Explained Unpacking how AI tools could lower the barrier to biological threats, and what that means for how we govern the technology. October 2024
- Where’s the art in artificial intelligence? A look at generative AI’s creative claims, and what really separates authentic artistry from pattern-matching. October 2023
For funders
Bring me in across your portfolio
Investors, incubators, and philanthropists use me as a shared communications resource — standing up the function for portfolio companies and grantees that aren’t ready to hire for it. One introduction can cover a lot of ground.
Work with me
Tell me what you’re working on
Share a little about your work and what you’d like to communicate. I read every message and will get back to you personally.