McGuinness Strategies
Contact Will A strategy needs to be understood—and acted upon.
I help leaders clarify the decision, its implications, and the operating agenda that follows.
I help leaders align strategy, communications, and change.
The work begins when leadership has to make direction real.
When I help
Communications needs to function as part of leadership.
I connect executive, internal, external, and stakeholder communications to the organization’s priorities.
A transition is moving faster than the organization can absorb.
I align leaders, teams, systems, and communications around what is changing and what must happen next.
AI and knowledge strategy
Informed by work with NASA’s International Space Station program
AI, institutional memory, and better decisions.
I help leaders connect AI adoption to the knowledge their organizations already hold—making expertise easier to find, preserving memory through transition, and improving how decisions are made.
Working together
Advisory, project-based, or embedded.
Clients work directly with me.
The structure follows the work. When additional expertise is useful, I assemble a focused team around the assignment.
Start a conversation ↗Selected work
Building a knowledge capability for a complex, distributed institution.
- Challenge
- Improve how critical knowledge could be captured, accessed, and used across the International Space Station program.
- Role
- Designed the knowledge-management capability and recommendations.
- Outcome
- Accepted by agency leadership and extended across NASA centers.
Turning institutional ambition into participation at scale.
- Challenge
- Build stronger digital engagement and support a major institutional advancement agenda.
- Role
- Led digital strategy and later marketing, communications, and digital initiatives.
- Outcome
- Created strategies behind a record-breaking Giving Day and supported a five-year, $5 billion campaign.
Bringing a century-old institution into its next chapter.
- Challenge
- Modernize the public experience of the Pulitzer Prizes ahead of its 100th anniversary while preserving the authority of the institution.
- Role
- Led a digital overhaul that transformed the winners announcement from a press release into a live, multichannel event spanning editorial storytelling, broadcasting, and social engagement.
- Outcome
- The centennial platform included a redesigned Pulitzer.org, live distribution through the website, Facebook, and YouTube, and interactive coverage designed to reach new generations.
Representing a company and its leadership through significant change.
- Challenge
- Maintain clarity and consistency across public channels during organizational and industry change.
- Role
- Led digital and social strategy, representing the company and its leadership while working across communications, marketing, product, and university partnerships.
- Outcome
- Established a more coordinated public presence across 2U and edX channels.
Will McGuinness
Executive.
Advisor.
Operator.
For more than fifteen years, I have worked where leadership decisions, organizational priorities, and public expectations meet.
My experience spans executive advisory, institutional leadership, knowledge strategy, education technology, teaching, and journalism—including work with NASA, Columbia University, 2U / edX, and Perceptual Advisors. Teaching posts include Columbia University and New York University.
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