THE FRACTIONAL DIPLOMAT · 6-MONTH MINIMUM

The Fractional Diplomat - A senior advisor in your corner, so the hardest calls stop being yours alone.

Embedded, senior-level stewardship for the leader who's become the only one who can see the whole picture — six months, minimum.

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Let's schedule a confidential call about where you're struggling — no agenda on my side.

SELECT CLIENTS

AARP

CDC

Harvard University

American Cancer Society

Planned Parenthood

Obama for America

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

WBUR

AMAZE

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Heart Association

#GivingTuesday

Harvard University

Heifer International

Muscular Dystrophy Association

National Conference on Citizenship

Phillips Foundation

ZOE

AARP CDC Harvard University American Cancer Society Planned Parenthood Obama for America Children's Hospital of Philadelphia WBUR AMAZE American Academy of Pediatrics American Heart Association #GivingTuesday Harvard University Heifer International Muscular Dystrophy Association National Conference on Citizenship Phillips Foundation ZOE

What you walk away with.

Let's talk →

01

Every high-stakes conversation prepped before you walk in, not repaired after.

02

A narrative that still holds in month six, when the funding shifts and the story has to change with it.

03

Someone to call mid-crisis who needs no briefing, because I take on a select number clients so I know yours inside out.

04

A written playbook and transition plan, so your next comms hire inherits a system.

When the drift has already started

  • Communication problems don't announce themselves. They accumulate.

    You're rewriting the funder email yourself at 9pm because it's faster than explaining it. A board conversation you thought you closed in March comes back in May. Your program leads each describe the mission slightly differently and none of them are wrong. Your comms director leaves and takes the muscle memory with them. Comms is the first line cut in a tight budget, and the cost shows up six months later in a place nobody connects back to it.

  • Nobody calls any of it a crisis, but everyone can feel the drift.

    This isn't a retainer to review your newsletter, a PR relationship, or a content subscription. It's executive-level judgment on how your organization communicates, internally and externally, from someone who'll tell you the truth, help you make the hard calls, and stay until it's working.

At a glance

WHO IT’S FOR

Mission-driven executive leaders who need sustained senior-level communications stewardship without a full-time hire

DURATION

6-month minimum

ENTRY POINT

Diplomat Reset or direct inquiry

What this looks like in practice

A rhythm designed to keep your narrative consistent and leadership out of reactive mode — structured touchpoints, not open-ended retainer access.

EVERY WEEK

You're ready before the moment, not after

A 45-minute working session to prep the high-stakes conversations before they happen.

Executive talking points tested before you're in the room.

The one place you can say what you can't say in a staff meeting.

EVERY TWO WEEKS

Leadership stops drifting into mixed signals

Alignment that keeps the message consistent as conditions change.

Narrative drift caught and corrected before it spreads.

One voice across your leadership team, month after month.

EVERY MONTH

A crisis-ready advisor who already knows your story

Forward-looking narrative and positioning: what's coming, what needs to shift, what needs building.

Structured async access for feedback on live work between calls.

Real-time counsel when the stakes spike — from someone who doesn't need to be briefed first.

WHERE YOU LAND

You came in absorbing the entire communications load yourself — every shift, every crisis, every message routed through you. You leave with a senior advisor who carries it with you, so leadership can lead.

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THE SHIFT

What changes when someone's holding the whole narrative

What you have at the end of six months:

  • The weekly session moves the thinking upstream. Things get resolved before they reach your desk instead of after.

  • Not the system for prepping them. The actual conversations, one at a time, as they came.

  • Not fixed once. Caught in March, caught again in July, because conditions kept changing and so did the message.

  • You made the call in the hour you needed to make it.

  • What your next comms hire inherits isn't just the framework — it's six months of documented decisions and the reasoning behind them, so they know not just what to do, but why and how.

Work With me

Frequently asked questions

  • The Diplomat Reset is 90 days and builds what doesn't exist yet: the diagnosis, the message spine, the operating rhythm. The Fractional Diplomat is ongoing and applies senior judgment to decisions as they come up. The Reset builds the infrastructure. The Fractional Diplomat keeps it from eroding.

  • No. Most Fractional Diplomat clients come through a Reset, because there's usually something to steward by then. Direct entry works too. If a Reset is the better starting point for your organization, I'll tell you on our first call.

  • No. Your comms hire executes: the channels, the calendar, the production. The Fractional Diplomat is senior judgment on what to say, when, to whom, and in what order. Most organizations have execution capacity and no peer-level thinking partner for the hardest communication calls.

  • Both. I don't run your channels. Newsletters, social, press releases, and campaign production stay with your team or a vendor. I do write executive language with you: talking points, board memos, the announcement you can't get right. Strategy and execution live in the same person, with no handoff.

  • Access is defined and bounded, not unlimited. Structured async windows for feedback on live work, plus office hours. Specific parameters get agreed at the start of the engagement. This isn't an open retainer, and the boundaries are what keep the work strategic instead of reactive.

  • No. In a crisis I'm who you call to decide what to say and who hears it first. I'm not who works the press list or manages media response. The value is that I already know the full situation, so you're not spending the first two days briefing someone.

  • Stewardship compounds. The judgment gets sharper as I learn your organization, and the alignment work only holds if it's continuous. Shorter engagements produce advice. Six months produces a narrative that survives changing conditions. Fit gets assessed up front so neither of us enters work that won't land.

  • You receive a documented communications playbook and a transition plan. If both of us want to continue, the engagement extends. The intent is that your team and your next comms hire inherit a working system, not a dependency on me.

  • HR, personnel, and legal communications. Executive coaching and board facilitation. Done-for-you content production. Heavy travel, since I work from Boston and in-person sessions happen there.

TESTIMONIALS

"Our entire staff agreed that working with [Christine] was the best thing to come out of a major initiative.”

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Let's Talk

If you're the one holding the full picture, let's talk about what changes when you're not holding it alone.

Book a free 30-minute call. Confidential and a candid read on whether this is the right fit.

let's talk

Or email me: christine@christinekoh.com

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Holding the Room

A monthly thought letter on communications under pressure.