The Strategic 26: Communication Leaders Who Are Redefining What the Profession Looks Like

16 April 2026

Some awards are designed to celebrate. The Strategic 26 is designed to make a statement.

The argument is this: strategic communication has leaders worth naming and they operate at every level, in every discipline, and across the world’s full range of geographies. 

Not leaders in the vague, aspirational sense that the profession sometimes uses the word.

Leaders who have built things, changed things, and demonstrated through the evidence of their careers that communication can be a genuine force for organizational and societal impact. 

Strategic launched the award in January 2026 – the same month we removed our paywall and made all of our content freely accessible. That timing was deliberate. 

The Strategic 26 is not a gated honor for insiders. It is an open recognition program, free to enter, accepting both peer nominations and self-nominations, designed to identify and celebrate communication leaders from anywhere in the world who are making a significant difference to the profession through their leadership and daily work. 

The program reflects Strategic’s purpose to demonstrate the value of communication and its impact on organizational objectives. Not to describe the profession as it is, but to advocate for it as it could be – more rigorous, more strategically grounded, more confident about its own value.

This year’s Strategic 26 honorees are 26 of the clearest expressions of that possibility we have seen. They span six continents, dozens of sectors, and every career stage. What unites them is not geography or seniority. It is evidence. Evidence of impact, evidence of leadership, evidence of a willingness to build something that outlasts a job title.

Here is who they are and why they matter.

Adedoyin Jaiyesimi built what didn’t exist. As co-founder of Comms Avenue, she created a dedicated professional community for African communicators – practitioners who had long been underserved by the global associations and networks that dominate the field. That kind of institution-building is rare. It requires not just vision but sustained commitment to people who weren’t being served. Adedoyin’s advocacy record reflects the same orientation: toward equity, access, and structural change in a profession that still has significant ground to cover on all three.

Alex Malouf has spent two decades working in places where communications is genuinely difficult. Emerging markets across the Middle East and broader region, spanning governments, multinationals, and industry – contexts where the stakes are high, the infrastructure is variable, and the margin for error is narrow. That is a very different career path from someone who has built their reputation inside stable, well-resourced organizations in mature markets. Alex has done the hard version, repeatedly, across governments and organizations that don’t forgive strategic errors, and he has built a recognized body of work as a result.

Alison Arnot has done something that few practitioners manage: she has made internal crisis communication a recognized specialization in its own right. Her approach is evidence-based and award-winning. Her work has influenced how organizations think about what internal communication is actually supposed to accomplish when things go wrong – not just keep people informed, but maintain organizational coherence under pressure. Crisis comms is where the gap between good communicators and great ones becomes impossible to ignore.

Aliya Boranbayeva brings a decade of cross-sector experience and a skill that is undervalued precisely because it looks easy: narrative translation. The ability to take complex organizational realities and communicate them clearly and compellingly across different audiences and contexts is foundational to strategic value. Aliya demonstrates it consistently across the diverse sector environments she has navigated, and her trajectory places her firmly in the emerging leader category the profession needs to watch.

Amanda Coleman has spent two decades in one of the most demanding communications environments that exists – police communications – rising to director-level leadership and building expertise in crisis communication that is both deep and extraordinarily well-tested. Her publishing record matters here as much as her practice record. Practitioners who commit to writing and sharing their thinking publicly are doing something important for the profession’s collective intelligence. Amanda does both, at a level that few practitioners sustain over time.

Ann-Marie Blake has built her professional identity around advocacy for underrepresented groups – a commitment that shows up not just in job descriptions but in sustained volunteerism and community engagement over many years. In a profession that still struggles with diversity at senior levels, and where equity work is often performative rather than structural, practitioners who put in the sustained, often invisible work consistently deserve recognition. Ann-Marie does.

Anthony Monks represents solid professional excellence in the most meaningful sense of that phrase. More than a decade of internal communications practice across multiple sectors, with a track record that reflects real competence across a range of organizational contexts. The profession is built on practitioners like Anthony – people who do the work well, across varied environments, without necessarily seeking the spotlight. That consistency across contexts is harder than it looks and worth naming.

Dennis Larsen operates at the intersection of senior leadership and board advisory work with a global reputation that reflects genuine strategic seniority. Board-level communication advisory is a distinct discipline. It requires the ability to speak credibly to executives and directors who are not interested in communication theory – only in its commercial and reputational consequences. Dennis has built a sustained practice at that level, with the kind of international recognition that doesn’t emerge without a consistent track record of delivering at the highest organizational tiers.

Ed Davis co-founded an international consultancy with genuine cross-border operations and experience. That distinction matters because “international” is often claimed by communicators who have worked in a second country on secondment, or managed a campaign with a regional dimension. Building a consultancy that operates credibly across national contexts – with clients, expertise, and delivery capacity distributed accordingly – is substantially harder. Ed has done it.

Eduvie Martin has accumulated a set of professional experiences that is simply unusual in scope and depth for someone at her career stage. FTSE 20 experience. Past president of IABC UK and Ireland. Entrepreneurship in the cultural and entertainment space. Each of those represents a significant professional achievement. Together, they reflect a career that is already operating well above its years – and one that has a long way still to run.

Edyta Blachowska brings nearly two decades of public relations experience with a strong track record in internal communications and multiple prestigious awards recognizing the quality of her work. Her career reflects the kind of consistent professional excellence that shapes organizations from the inside – building communications capability, developing teams, and delivering results in environments that demand both strategic thinking and strong execution. Multiple industry awards across a sustained career are a reliable signal of sustained performance.

Helen Bentley became the youngest-ever partner at EY Japan at the age of 28. That single fact signals something important about how she operates. She is now building a global practice in digital design experience – a discipline that sits at the intersection of communication, technology, and user-centered thinking, and one that is increasingly central to how organizations create value in their interactions with employees and customers. The combination of extraordinary early achievement within a major professional services firm and genuine innovation in a growing discipline makes Helen one of the most distinctive profiles on this list.

James McCann has founded two companies and built a client base in high-scrutiny sectors. Entrepreneurship in communications is genuinely harder than it looks from the outside. Building not one but two companies, with clients who cannot afford to work with anyone who can’t deliver under pressure, requires a level of commercial and professional competence that the profession does not always reward visibly. James’s entrepreneurial track record does the rewarding for him.

Jared Meade combines agency founding, PRSA and PRCA dual credentials, two decades of experience, and adjunct faculty roles at the college level. That last element deserves particular attention. Communicators who teach – who invest time, expertise, and energy in developing the next generation of practitioners – are making a contribution to the profession that doesn’t always show up in awards but shapes its long-term trajectory more than most individual achievements. Jared does all of it simultaneously.

Kevin Perez-Allen has worked across political campaigns, advocacy, and government communications for more than two decades, at senior levels, in contexts where the stakes are electoral and the audiences are unforgiving. Political and government communications is a distinct discipline. It rewards people who can build coalitions, sustain narratives under adversarial conditions, move fast under scrutiny, and advise decision-makers who face a form of accountability that most corporate communicators never experience. Kevin has that experience in depth, across a career that reflects genuine strategic breadth.

Lisa Riemers and Matisse Hamel-Nelis are recognized together for their work in accessibility communications – a niche that is genuinely important and genuinely underserved by the mainstream profession. Making communication accessible is not a compliance exercise. It is a strategic and ethical imperative that most organizations still treat as an afterthought, and that the profession as a whole has been too slow to prioritize. Lisa and Matisse have built careers around changing that, with a collaborative model and a public profile that is actively expanding what the field considers necessary. Their trajectory signals a specialization whose moment has arrived.

Marc C. Whitt has four decades of industry leadership, two Number One Amazon bestsellers, and an impeccable record of sustained contribution to the profession. Longevity alone is not what earns recognition here – the profession has many long-tenured practitioners. What distinguishes Marc is the consistent combination of active practice, recognized publishing, and generosity of service across a career that has never stopped adding value to the broader field. His record in higher education communications has given him both depth in a specific sector and a platform from which he has influenced the profession well beyond it.

Monica Molesag has built a career around sustainability communications and strategic business transformation, working across industries and geographies in a way that has given her genuine cross-sector perspective. Sustainability communication is one of the most consequential and contested arenas in contemporary corporate communication. Getting it right requires deep subject matter expertise, sophisticated stakeholder navigation, and the ability to communicate credibly about complex, contested issues to audiences who are increasingly skeptical and frequently adversarial. Monica has built that capability at meaningful scale, and her impact across industries reflects genuine strategic range.

Monique Zytnik has been a significant institutional force within IABC and has built five professional communities over the course of her career – a form of leadership that is easy to undervalue because its output is organizational rather than personal. Building communities that sustain themselves, that develop other leaders, that create durable professional infrastructure, is serious and demanding work. Monique has done it at scale, over time, and across geographies. Her book on employee communication has extended her influence into the practitioner community more broadly.

Nishant Kumar brings a decade of experience across major global organizations, and is a strong emerging force in India’s growing internal communication community. His support for the NextICShift initiative – which has been mapping the state of internal communication across India’s major cities – reflects a practitioner who understands that building the profession requires more than doing the work well inside your own organization. Nishant’s cross-organizational track record positions him well for the senior strategic roles the profession will need him and people like him to fill.

Olha Boiko has spent a decade building real communications expertise, earned her CIPR qualification, and is now deliberately investing in the business and strategic capabilities that separate communicators who get a seat at the table from those who wait outside it. That combination of practice, professional credentialing, and ongoing development reflects a seriousness of purpose that is easy to recognize and worth naming. She is earlier in her career than many on this list. The trajectory, and the intent behind it, put her here.

Richard Etienne has built The Introvert Space into a distinctive and genuinely differentiated consultancy in a market that rewards differentiation but rarely sees it executed with real conviction. The Introvert Space fills a real gap – in how organizations think about internal culture, talent, and communication with professionals who don’t operate on extroversion as a default. His career spans government, media, and publishing, giving him a breadth of context that many communicators who stay within a single sector never develop. The consultancy itself is the clearest expression of a genuine professional identity built over years.

Rod Cartwright brings decades of senior agency and industry leadership across multiple major global communications firms – the kind of sustained professional presence that shapes how the practice of communications develops inside the institutions that define it. That influence is harder to measure than a single campaign or award. It is also harder to build, and harder to sustain. Rod’s career reflects someone who has consistently operated at the level where communications decisions have real organizational consequence, and who has contributed to building the strategic capacity of the firms he has led.

Renna Markson combines strong industry service with an entrepreneurial record that reflects real initiative. Building something – whether a company, a community, or a new approach to practice – is how the profession renews itself. Renna is doing that, while maintaining the professional service orientation that reflects a genuine commitment to the field rather than just personal advancement.

Sia Papageorgiou is among the most globally recognized figures in the communication profession. The combination of senior executive practice, sustained global professional leadership – including through IABC and the CSCE – and consistent advancement of the discipline’s intellectual and methodological foundations is rare. Sia has spent years building the kind of professional capital that makes her not just a practitioner but a genuine architect of what strategic communication means and how it is understood at a global level. Her influence extends well beyond any single organization or geography.

Tolulope Olorundero has founded both a communications consultancy and a global social impact enterprise – a dual entrepreneurial track that reflects a commitment to building things that extend well beyond client service and revenue. The advocacy record runs alongside the commercial one, and the social impact work reflects a conviction that strategic communication has obligations beyond the organizations that pay for it. For a field that still debates whether communications can be genuinely strategic, Tolulope’s career demonstrates what it looks like when a practitioner treats that question as already settled and moves on to harder ones.

Why This List? Why Now?

The Strategic 26 was not designed to produce a hall of fame. It was designed to make a point.

The communication profession is at a strategic inflection point. Artificial intelligence is reshaping what routine communication work looks like and who does it. Organizations are under pressure to move faster, demonstrate more clearly, and speak more credibly across more channels simultaneously. The case for communication leadership at the executive level – not communication management, not communication support, but genuine strategic leadership – has never been more urgent or more available to be made.

This list is an expression of that case. Each of the 26 honorees represents, in a specific and demonstrable way, what strategic communication leadership actually looks like when it is being practiced rather than described. Some of them have built institutions. Some have defined specializations. Some have led globally. Some have written the books that will shape how the next generation of practitioners thinks about the field. All of them have been doing the work.

Strategic exists to elevate exactly this kind of leadership. Our decision to remove the paywall from Strategic Magazine in January 2026, simultaneous with the launch of the Strategic 26 initiative, reflects a commitment to making that evidence accessible – to practitioners at every career stage, in every market, at every organizational level. Recognition that lives behind a paywall is recognition that serves insiders. The Strategic 26 is designed to serve the profession.

The nominations for next year’s Strategic 27 will open later this year. The profession is full of people who deserve to be named. The standard is evidence, not credentials alone. Impact, not longevity alone. Building something that outlasts a job title.

Help us find them.