Welcome back to another edition of The Goods — the newsletter covering the people at the intersection of social good and strategic communications. This month’s spotlight features Kristen Mack, Vice President, Communications, MacArthur Fellows, and Partnerships at the MacArthur Foundation: a global philanthropy that supports creative people and effective institutions working to build a more just, peaceful, and resilient world.
Kristen manages a comprehensive strategy to strengthen MacArthur’s storytelling about the impact of the organizations and individuals they support as well as the communities they serve. Her career has spanned the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Formally, she was a director of corporate communications at Golin, the director of media relations for the Cook County Health & Hospitals System and served as a City Hall reporter for the Chicago Tribune and a political writer for the Washington Post and Houston Chronicle earlier in her career. All of these experiences brought lessons she’s fused into her role in the foundation sector.
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. MacArthur is placing a few big bets that truly significant progress is possible on some of the world’s most pressing social challenges, including over-incarceration, global climate change, nuclear risk, and significantly increasing financial capital for the social sector.
Read our full interview with Kristen Mack:
The Goods: You’ve had a storied career across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, as well as in journalism. Is there anything about your professional journey you’d like to highlight that might not be captured on your résumé?
Kristen Mack: My career has allowed me to engage with issues like violence prevention at both the interpersonal and systems level. When I first came to Chicago as a reporter, I was part of a reporting team that wrote a yearlong series on Seeking Safe Passage, telling the stories of young people affected by gun violence. We covered all angles, talking to families, community members, elected officials, and school leaders. Later, while working at the Cook County Health and Hospitals System, I sat at the bedside of an 18-year-old in the trauma unit who had been shot multiple times.
Now, at the MacArthur Foundation, those real-world experiences shape how I think about storytelling from a systems-change perspective.
The Goods: What aspects of the work you’re currently doing at MacArthur feel more important now than ever?
Kristen Mack: That’s a big question! I think being responsive to the needs of our grantees continues to be our main driver. Many of my colleagues at MacArthur bring lived experience similar to mine, which makes us deeply passionate about the work we do. When we see people and organizations on the front lines addressing present-day crises, our instinct is to be responsive and supportive.
Even the phrase “now more than ever” feels a bit trite at this point. It became a pandemic-era cliché, but the sentiment still holds true: the challenges we face demand responsiveness and collaboration. Those of us working in philanthropy are learning that we must adopt movement-building skills – organizing our resources equitably and strategically to meet the needs of the organizations we fund and represent.
The Goods: How would you define your approach to organizational storytelling? Has that approach shifted over time?
Kristen Mack: A few years ago, we rethought what makes a good “MacArthur message.” We spoke with people internally and externally to understand what aspects of our organization resonate most. One of my favorite comments was that MacArthur is “Davos meets Burning Man” – meaning we’re both erudite and experimental, we are big picture visionary thinkers who are willing to try new things.
Ultimately, our message framework focuses on three key elements: it leads with emotion, it’s supported by facts and data, and it centers the people doing the work. It doesn’t have to follow that exact order, but it must include all three elements.
The greatest lesson from that process was humility. We realized it’s not about us – it’s about how we support the people doing the work. We have to be humble enough to decenter MacArthur in our storytelling and let our grantees’ stories shine.
The Goods: How do you encourage all of MacArthur’s employees and departments to align around how the organization represents and defines its values?
Kristen Mack: We went through a similar process for defining our values shortly after our president, John Palfrey, joined the organization. We found that values animated how MacArthur’s staff carried out our mission. Yet, few people could clearly articulate those values, because we did not have a shared understanding. We held a series of conversations and internal surveys to identify and define the values we were trying to embody. Five core values emerged: creativity; diversity, equity, and inclusion; empathy; integrity; and learning.
Now, employees no longer have to guess what does or doesn’t align with our values – they’re clearly defined and embedded in everything we do.
The Goods: In that same vein, what advice would you give other institutions—large or small—as they think about building a year-long narrative or storytelling strategy?
Kristen Mack: Part of my answer may sound mundane, but it’s incredibly important: every year, every team takes stock. We ask staff to pause, reflect on goals from the past year, and create new ones for the year ahead. That’s the only way to set actionable and realistic goals.
Our program and communications teams collaborate closely, analyzing why certain goals weren’t met – or why others were exceeded – because responsiveness often requires adapting to unforeseen circumstances.
We also take a top-down approach to goal setting. The president sets overarching goals, the leadership team aligns theirs with his, and each team ladders up to their respective leader’s priorities.
While we may not have a single institutional strategy in the same way we have programmatic ones, all our teams’ goals directly support the president’s vision for the year.
The Goods: What lessons or skills do you think communications and social impact professionals should lean into more?
Kristen Mack: A skill I’ve carried from my journalism days – beyond writing well – is the ability to build authentic relationships. It sounds simple, but being able to sit across from someone, look them in the eye, and have a genuine conversation is a lost art.
As a journalist, I sometimes had to knock on the door of someone whose child had just been killed. I had to connect with them and build trust within minutes. That kind of empathy and authenticity can’t be faked – it’s partly innate, but doing it well takes practice and intention.
That mindset has allowed me to go far beyond traditional “communications” work in my current role.
The Goods: To close out, what would you like your professional legacy to be?
Kristen Mack: I appreciate that question, because I’ve been reflecting on it a lot this year. I think this work is both ancestor and descendant work – it’s about honoring those who came before us and building something meaningful for the next generation.