Coaching & Strategic Support

Coaching & Strategic Support

Tailored support so you can advance your goals

When scientists face new opportunities, like a media interview or policymaker meeting, they turn to COMPASS for guidance and strategy support. With deep expertise in policy processes, journalism practices, communication skills, and more, we help scientists craft the right strategy and the right message at just the right time. We also help adapt engagement strategies to online settings, so scientists can continue advancing solutions from their own homes.

Media Strategy

Coaching and support for working with journalists

Are you trying to get the word out about your research? We help scientists craft op-eds, pitches, and press releases, respond to media inquiries, prepare for interviews, and more.

Contact us about honing your message

Policy Strategy

Support for engaging with policymakers

Whether you’ve been invited to give witness testimony at a Capitol Hill hearing or you’re trying to figure out who to talk to, we’re here to help.

Contact us about setting your goals

Event Support

Coaching event and conference organizers

Are you planning a scientific conference? Organizers collaborate with us to enhance and integrate conference themes and activities, engage influential outside speakers and guests, and turn convening spaces into opportunities for true connection. From strategy for conference outreach to taking a conference virtual, we can help you achieve your goals for your community.

Contact us about amplifying your impact

I’ve been engaging with external audiences about my research on controversial forest management issues for nearly 40 years, but this was the best opportunity I’ve had to participate in a critical evaluation of the whole communication process with a group of research peers and media experts… Simply hearing what a ‘day in the life of a journalist’ is like will change the way I react to the next email or phone request for an interview.

~ Dr. Tom Veblen, University of Colorado, Boulder

Having someone with a critical eye who knows the science but also how things work on Capitol Hill, someone who can say ‘that’s too much jargon' or explain the proposed legislation or the constraints—that’s an invaluable service that COMPASS provides.

~ Dr. Scott Doney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Don’t underestimate the power of sharing your science with people who can use it, the value of the COMPASS practitioners to help you communicate, and the network of opportunities COMPASS can provide. It’s worth your time.

~ Dr. Brian Chaffin, Assistant Professor of Water Policy, University of Montana

Much of my ability to connect with journalists comes from my willingness to engage them on their terms. COMPASS helped me learn how to identify what journalists need, and to talk about my work in that context.

~ Dr. Gretchen Hofmann

You know your COMPASS training worked when a congressional staffer repeats your message back to you more than a year later!

~ Dr. Jennifer Balch, Director, Earth Lab; Associate Professor of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder