Everything I've built, I built from scratch.
I'm Christine Koh, a strategic communications advisor, and the person colleagues started calling The Diplomat before I had a name for what I was doing.
A Ph.D. in music and brain science taught me how people process information and how a story holds together under tension. I've spent the twenty years since putting both to work in the field: building creative properties and advising mission-driven organizations.
Clients still find me the way they always have. Someone trusted me enough to send them.
MY STORY
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
The longer version
I've been on my own since I was 18, by necessity rather than choice.
I grew up in an affluent, mostly white suburb of Boston, in a Korean immigrant family that didn't fit the mold. My parents ran a convenience store in a tough neighborhood, 6am to 11pm, no days off. I was the sixth of seven. By 8 I was taking public transit an hour on my own to get to the store. My grades were terrible, not for lack of intellect but because there was no room at home to think.
Wheaton College changed that. Within two years I was running the campus newspaper and had taken it from bimonthly to weekly. That spring my parents told me they were done supporting me. When I asked why, they said, "Well, Christine, you always seem to figure things out."
So that's what I did. Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Wheaton's first class of White House interns.
Then every Ph.D. program turned me down. I had no lab experience, so I went and got it, and earned a Master's at night while I did. I applied again. That time everyone said yes. I funded the Ph.D. and the postdoc myself on NIH grants I won, one of them the first in my department's history, and finished in auditory neurology at Mass General, MIT, and Harvard Medical School.
I left academia in 2006 with no plan and fifteen years of practice at finding a way through.
Everything since, I built from scratch. A media brand started at midnight with a baby on my hip. A book. Two podcasts. Two design businesses. Then creative director on campaigns for the American Cancer Society, Heifer International, and the CDC.
Colleagues started calling me The Diplomat. Not because I smooth things over. Because I can walk into the hardest room, make space for what's actually happening, and build what comes after.
"I want to do great work for great people, with no drama."
– Christine
What I help you do
Get your leadership team telling one story, in every room.
Name what's actually breaking in weeks, not months.
Leave your team a communication rhythm that keeps running without you.
How I work, and why it's different
I've done the execution myself.
Twenty years of campaigns, content, design, and editorial systems. So I can see quickly what your team can actually carry, and build the plan around that. When the gap is skill rather than bandwidth, I train your people instead of doing it for them forever.
The brain science is structural, not decorative.
When I have a strong read on what will move an audience before I can prove it, that's a Ph.D. plus twenty years of watching what actually moves people. It isn't a communications degree.
I say the thing no one's saying.
Nothing good comes from ignoring the elephant in the room. I make space for the full reality, the frustration and the wasted budget included, then tell you the truth directly and kindly.
I know what it costs to be outside the room.
I've been the person who didn't obviously belong in nearly every room I've entered. One of few Asian families in a white suburb. On my own at 18. Mission-driven work isn't a positioning choice for me. It's an extension of what I've always known.
Ways to work with me
Diplomat Reset
90 days, when something is actively breaking.
Fractional Diplomat
Six months minimum, when you need someone in your corner ongoing.
Diplomat Circle
For senior comms leaders carrying the load without a peer group.
The creative work
Alongside the advisory work I write and podcast about creativity and intentional living. My brain is a constant content creation engine, which isn't a side hustle so much as how my thinking compounds.
Outside the office
I'm a reader, a newer gardener obsessed with pollinator perennials, and a baker who finds meticulous joy in decorating fancy cakes. I no longer perform music, though I once did semi-professionally, and I follow women's figure skating and soccer with more enthusiasm than skill.
Let's Talk
I work with a select number of mission-driven organizations each year. If you've been living with a communications problem the usual fixes haven't solved, or you want someone who thinks strategically and understands the full operational reality, I'd be glad to talk.
Not a sales call. An honest conversation.
Or email me: christine@christinekoh.com
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Holding the Room
A thought letter on communications under pressure.