Mergers & Acquisitions
M&A communications is high-stakes work where timing, precision, and messaging make the difference between success and chaos. Without strong communications leadership, uncertainty can cost you talent, customers, and brand value. I've led M&A communications through two acquisitions, in addition to leading internal communications and U.S. market comms for a take private transaction, where a company was delisted from the public market. I can help your organization manage complex stakeholder needs across employees, customers, investors, and media to maintain confidence, protect brand equity, and ensure the right messages reach the right audiences at exactly the right time.
Corporate Acquisition — Livestream Company
In 2021, I had the opportunity to lead the communications strategy for a corporate acquisition of an industry leading livestream company. I partnered with the company’s head of investor relations to ensure that communication to the market, stakeholders, employees and customers, was crisp, clear and reinforced the value of the two brands coming together.
A few of the accompanying assets I was responsible for included customer communications (for both brands), a blog from Pushpay and Resi media, press release and US media outreach, new website landing pages, social media content, and a media relations kit.
In addition, I was responsible for the strategy and execution of an internal communications plan to help cascade the news with transparency and confidence to employees and customers. Everything from a day-of announcement schedule, to crafting internal talking points or participating in a live all-company broadcast alongside the CEO—I was the point person to ensure a successful announcement rollout and launch both internally and to the public.
From Public Company, to Private Equity Transition
In 2023, I had an opportunity to work alongside the investor relations team, the company’s senior leadership team, and an external consultant, to develop a holistic communications strategy to support the transition of Pushpay being a publicly listed company in New Zealand and Australia, to transitioning to a privately held company through an acquisition by private equity firms. The biggest challenge? Maintaining business stability and stakeholder confidence during the 7-month purchase process. With a diverse stakeholder audience—investors, customers, employees, the faith market, and more—ensuring the right message was delivered to the right audience at the right time was pivotal. This was a very public process, and challenged our Investor Relations and PR teams to be quick, crisp and creative in our communications plans. A lot of learnings along the way, but the transaction was approved by investors and resulted in Pushpay officially becoming privately held in May, 2023.
Corporate Acquisition—Church Tech Software
In 2019, Pushpay acquired Church Community Builder and I was responsible for the internal and external communication rollout for the transaction in the U.S., alongside our investor relations team who was responsible for New Zealand and Australia market outreach. This was the first acquisition I have had an opportunity to be a part of, and I fell in love with the process.
The biggest challenge of this project? We had a new CEO at the time, and had recently lost our head of Marketing. Additionally, the company we were acquiring had specific requests on the communication and messaging approach, which were agreed upon during negotiations. This provided an opportunity for me to step-up and own the launch strategy and communication process alongside a few individuals from CCB. While the initial transaction and announcement was successful, COVID hit a month later, and put strains on the change management plan and attempt to smoothly merge company culture.