Kristina Halvorson interviews Rob MacFie and Nikki Godley from Wise about their work in scaling content and design across the organization. They cover the challenges of rapid growth and the need to create a clear mission and principles for the team. Rob and Nikki explain the process of developing a career map and discuss the importance of creating …

Kristina Halvorson interviews Trisha Causley and Maria Hofstetter, both content designers at Shopify. They discuss the role of large language models (LLMs) in AI, the importance of prompts and instructions in guiding LLMs, and the potential career paths for content designers in the AI field. There’s practical advice and examples, bringing clarity a…

In this episode, Kristina Halvorson interviews Jeff Eaton, a partner at Autogram. They share the challenges organizations face in content production and management and discuss the importance of observability in assessing content quality and effectiveness. The conversation leads to the key roles needed in content strategy and to the importance of st…

Kristina Halvorson interviews Erica Jorgensen, a content designer and author of the book "Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX." They discuss the role of content designers in organizations and the need to demonstrate the value of content. Erica emphasizes the need to use data and analytics to measure the impact of c…

Kristina Halvorson and Meghan Casey, two of the field’s most experienced practitioners, interview each other for the Content Strategy Podcast. They discuss the importance of collaboration and fostering curiosity, effective listening and common points of friction within an organization. The chat also covers the challenges of working with non-content…

Kaysie Garza, Content Design Lead at Hotjar, discusses the role of content design within the organization and its collaboration with other teams. Kaysie delves into communicating research effectively, a collaborative approach to naming and offers advice for hiring content designers. The conversation delves into the structure of user experiences at …

Mark McCormick, a retired content strategy and customer experience leader. He joins Kristina on the Content Strategy Podcast where they discuss the importance of content strategy and its evolution over the years. Mark shares his insights on the roles and processes of content strategists and emphasizes the need for content strategists to see themsel…

Morgan Marie Quinn is a Content Design leader at Google where she oversees content teams across Bard and Google Assistant. Morgan joins Kristina to talk about all things large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. From defining LLMs, accuracy, vulnerabilities and governance, this episode has it all direct from someone at the forefront of this n…

Keri Maijala has been in the user experience space for more than 20 years. Currently leading a content design team at LinkedIn, Keri has a wealth of knowledge and experience which she shares in her chat with Kristina. No topic was off limits as they chatted about content skill sets and roles, the evolution of content and UX terminology, the invisib…

Aladrian Goods leads the content design team at Intuit. Aladrian has lots of experience and advice for aligning content with other disciplines, connecting the dots between teams and getting people to experience the value of content design. As if that’s not enough reason to listen in, Aladrian also has plenty to share about the role of content in ge…

Chris Baty joined Figma as their first ever UX writer. Now he is the Head of UX Writing, leading a team at the intersection of content, UX and product design. Chris talks to Kristina about growing the UX writing team at Figma, the business value of UX writing and using data to inform your work and decisions. He also accidentally founded National No…

Peter Merholz works with organizations of all sizes across different sectors. He sees first hand how they are unique and where they are similar when it comes to design, content and UX. Peter joins Kristina to discuss the intersection of these disciplines, their maturity and how they are perceived by leadership.…

Kara DeFrias has written for Vice Presidents, was part of the California Covid Task Force for the first 100 days of the pandemic and has worked on the Super Bowl, Oscars and Emmys. And that’s not the full list of accomplishments and career milestones. With so much experience, it was inevitable Kristina would invite Kara to the podcast. Plus they fi…

Katherine Karaus knows what it takes to find your ideal job in content and UX and to know your own worth. Katherine shares lots of practical advice with Kristina Halvorson about competitive differentiation when job hunting, building and maintaining a strong personal brand and content and UX portfolios. They also cover salary negotiation, cover lett…

Ann Rockley is known as the “mother” of content strategy. She has an international reputation for establishing the field in content strategy. In her chat with Kristina, Ann shared some of her experience and advice from decades of experience in content including creating a methodology for content, ways of effectively communicating with people, conte…

Are Halland is the inventor of the core model, a framework for working together to create better content for digital products and services. In this episode, Are shares the origins of the core model and describes the components of the model in detail, along with how it can be used. Along the way, Are and Kristina chat about getting alignment across …

Noz Urbina has decades of experience in content. He’s especially interested in omnichannel strategies and how the sum of the parts work together to support the user's journey. In his conversation with Kristina Halvorson, Noz covers personalization, delivering effective customer experiences, customer journey mapping, content in the pharma sector and…

Joanne Ward believes a good content experience is critical to the customer experience. In her chat with Kristina, Jo talks about leading content strategy at scale as part of Salesforce’s evolving content practice. They cover collaborating with other disciplines, advocacy, and the importance of technical writing. Across the entire conversation, ther…

Corey Vilhauer shares with Kristina Halvorson how he moved from being a marketing and ad copywriter into content strategy and leadership. They pack plenty of topics into the chat including how to communicate with clients, driving meaningful conversations about content and aligning around a shared language and understanding. They also reveal their p…

Sarah Winters takes us from the beginnings of her career in content, through to the future plans for Content Design London. Along the way, Sarah and Kristina chat about content strategy, content design and related disciplines. They touch on codifying content design as a practice, industry definitions, ownership and measuring success of content stra…

David Dylan Thomas is a founder, author and speaker who is an expert on designing for cognitive bias. In his conversation with Kristina, David shares his experience and insights on patterns in representation, assumption audits, designing for bad outcomes and the need for meaningful conversations about bias.…

Sarah Etter, Senior Manager of Content Design at Procore offers an abundance of practical advice based on years of experience as a content practitioner. From embedding content designers across an organization and ensuring a design system is content oriented to scaling content design. The chat also touches on writing globally and inclusively, demons…

Candi Williams is an experienced content leader who cares deeply about community, diversity and inclusivity. In her chat with Kristina, they talk about building and leading a content team, the importance of connecting with peers, the need for effective onboarding and examples of inclusive content projects.…

Torrey Podmajersky is a UX Writer at Google and author of Strategic Writing for UX with plenty of experience in establishing a career in content and UX. Torrey talks to Kristina about getting hired into content and UX roles, what the UX practice at Google looks like, and how to demonstrate value and make an impact as a UX writer.…

Cruce Saunders and the [A] team work with the largest and most complex enterprise content publishers. They know how complex content can be and have experience untangling the mess. Cruce brings his wisdom to the Content Strategy Podcast to talk about content transformation, unifying customer journeys through content, and establishing a true organiza…

The language we choose is an important part of the user experiences we create. Vidhika Bansal, UX Manager at Intuit cares deeply about language for the audience and also when communicating internally. She talks to Kristina about connecting language to decision making, using language as a tool for acceptance and belonging and the importance of avoid…

Establishing and growing a content design practice requires strong leadership and teamwork. Chelsea Larsson shares how she has grown such a practice at Zendesk and offers some tactics to help advocate for content designers. There’s also an insight into the content design team structure at Zendesk and peer mentorship. And let’s not forget the part o…

As Program Manager at Brain Traffic, Tenessa Gemelke has reviewed thousands of conference talk proposals. In this episode of the Content Strategy Podcast, Tenessa offers her top tips for what to talk about and how to pitch it. There’s also a potted history of Confab: The Content Strategy Conference and musings about the caring content community.…

Gord Roberts loves website content strategy and instilling good practices for successful collaboration on content. As Manager of Web Content Strategy at the Bank of Canada, Gord shares his thoughts on connecting silos for unified content strategy and the relationship between content operations and design. Gord has experience leading a team through …

Alexa Apallas was one of the first five content strategy leads at PayPal. Alexa talks to Kristina about her path into content and what it takes to advance to a content leadership role. Alexa also shares how content designers collaborate with product for a better customer experience, getting people to care about content and content success stories a…

Preston So shares his thoughts and advice for new ways of delivering content. He offers examples and insights into omni-channel content audits, thinking about audiences holistically and techniques for enabling content strategy whatever the channel and format.By Kristina Halvorson

With experience in technical writing, UX writing, content strategy and content design, John Collins shares his thoughts on maturing content disciplines. In his chat with Kristina John also talks about centralizing and scaling Atlassian’s content practice, content titles versus content roles and demonstrating the value of content work.…

When communicating about difficult topics, like death, using the right words, voice and tone is essential. Helen Lawson shares how she approaches this with empathy at Co-op Funeralcare to ensure clarity in their communication. Helen also gives an insight into leading on the change of language, building self-serve products and why avoiding euphemism…

Erica Jorgensen offers an insight into content practices at Microsoft. From more content not being better, ensuring content is an asset and the relationship between content and brand. Erica’s chat with Kristina covers using style guides to talk the same language across teams, the way that content works with research and testing and measuring conten…

Jonathan McFadden moved into content strategy to solve problems and help people. He talks about using content strategy for change by advocating for underrepresented users, building designated spaces of inclusion and ultimately working towards an inclusive and diverse industry.By Kristina Halvorson

Jordan Craig has worked at Twitter for 18 months as the lead of their content design team. Jordan shares her experience of growing the team, managing Twitter’s terminology, using AI for style guidance, finding a community and creating paths into content design.By Kristina Halvorson

When Andy Welfle joined Adobe four years ago he got to work founding and building their content design practice. He now manages a growing team and talks about the relationship between content design and UX writing, content as part of a design system and equitable terminology in tech.By Kristina Halvorson

Kristina welcomes Robert Mills of GatherContent to talk about his experience as head of content for GatherContent. He talks about what content ops is, not just in the context of his team’s product but also as part of a larger conversation about the field of content strategy. Rob also shares how he handles content operations internally at GatherCont…

As the UX operations lead at HubSpot, Beth Dunn applies a content strategy lens to the way she’s helping lead the company’s UX practice. In this episode, she and Kristina talk about how HubSpot defines UX operations and design, how she’s working to advance the practice, and how teams can get aligned on terminology and goals.…

Bram Wessel is a co-founder of Factor, a Seattle-based consultancy that brings user-centered design principles and practice to enterprise-scale information problems. In this episode, he breaks down the types of taxonomy problems many large orgs face, including problems with findability, site search, and navigation. Bram’s work aims to cater to how …

Abby Covert, better known as Abby the IA, returns to the show for a repeat appearance to talk about information architecture, her influential book, How to Make Sense of Any Mess, and life in the design world as a new mom (congratulations!). In this episode, she breaks down the steps to information architecture as outlined in her book, and shares so…

Ryan Skinner is the principal marketing analyst at Forrester, where he advises enterprise clients on content marketing activities through a strategic lens. In this episode, he and Kristina talk about the blind spots marketers (or sometimes entire companies) have when it comes to the customer experience, specifically in creating content that ties ba…

Christine is the Service Director of Content Strategy and Operations at SiriusDecisions. In this week’s podcast, she describes the Content Transformation Roadmap she uses to identify the strategy, people, processes, and technology needed to achieve these milestones. She also shares some thoughts on the definitions of “content marketing” and “conten…

This week, Kristina discovers that user-centered SEO isn’t just some magic you sprinkle on finished web copy right before hitting publish. After clashing on projects and stepping on each others’ toes, Chris Corak (an SEO) and Rebekah Baggs (a content and UX strategist) found smarter ways to integrate their work and create helpful, relevant web expe…

Dana DiTomaso joins Kristina this week to stray only slightly from the topic of content strategy—this time diving into the world of marketing and measuring content performance. As president and partner at Kick Point, an Edmonton-based digital marketing agency, Dana works with clients to untangle their varied and sometimes disjointed marketing effor…

Mike Petroff and Aaron Baker have teamed up to create a custom editorial analytics dashboard called “Scoop,” which they use to serve the content teams at Harvard University and the online version of The Harvard Gazette. Their goal? To give power back to the content creators, using data to answer their questions and help make informed decisions abou…

This week, Tina O’Shea (Director, Content Design & Strategy at QuickBooks) talks in depth about how content design went from being “just writing the words” to a key part of the QuickBooks product design process. She describes her team structure, and how she won executive support for their contributions to design. She also digs into how they created…

Author, publisher, conference organizer, and all-around renaissance man Lou Rosenfeld talks shop about writing the first book on IA, watching the evolution of design practices, and how he’s helping to keep people at the forefront of their respective industries.By Kristina Halvorson

Cruce Saunders joins Kristina this week to talk about multi-channel content publishing at the enterprise level. He describes how enterprises are starting (or hopefully starting) to take a more holistic approach to their content and customer experiences, moving away from the “content center of excellence” approach present in so many large organizati…

Karen Cross is head of content design at Atlassian, an Australian-based company known for their suite of software development and collaboration tools like Trello and Jira. Karen’s work to build a centralized content design team at Atlassian has unified their various product teams and finally brought writers and designers working together. The ultim…