On April 1, 2000, Kris Kurtenbach opened a communications consultancy in Washington with a premise that sounded, to two established firms, like a category error. Education was a client vertical, perhaps. It was not an entire practice. One firm rejected the idea; another later disappeared. Kurtenbach and founding partner Terri Ferinde kept the idea and chose the calendar's least reassuring launch date.
The joke aged well. Collaborative Communications Group now sits in an unusual seam between a public-relations agency, a strategy consultancy, a research shop, a design studio, and an event producer. It has worked in every state and a handful of countries. Its clients range from local education groups to federal agencies, universities, foundations, and national youth organizations. The company says it has designed more than 500 convenings for over 50,000 participants and 1,000 speakers.
The first product was a point of view
Collaborative's argument was that communications should not arrive at the end, after the policy memo has hardened and the meeting agenda is full. It should help decide what the organization means, which people need to be in the room, what evidence they require, and what action the story should make possible. That turns a brochure into one small output of a larger system.
Today, the service menu looks broad: messaging and thought leadership, media and engagement, research and reporting, strategic planning, websites and digital campaigns, brand systems and data visualization, plus full-service events. But there is a connecting tissue. The firm mostly serves organizations trying to improve education, youth development, workforce opportunity, culture, health, or community life. A generalist agency learns the assignment. Collaborative often arrives already knowing the institutions, the policy vocabulary, and the people who disagree.
The Collaborative loop: not a funnel, because the audience talks back
A vocabulary problem wearing a policy suit
The firm's work for Education Forward Arizona shows what this approach looks like when the crucial deliverable is a phrase. Arizona wanted more adults to earn degrees or credentials, but the public argument had stalled. The campaign's first problem was not a logo or a media list. It was that the word “college” made part of the audience picture a route that did not include them.
One language change, a wider coalition
Three statewide polls tested messages across party, geography, race, education, and income. The campaign moved from “college” to “education and training after high school.” More than 70% supported expanding those opportunities, and more than 80% supported Arizona's degree-or-certification goal.
The campaign also reported an estimated $1.2 million in earned-media value. The important number, though, was the one produced before the campaign launched: the message test.
This is the portable idea. Do not begin by asking how to make the existing sentence louder. Ask which noun is quietly shrinking the coalition. Test replacements with the people whose behavior matters. Then give partners the same language, so the paid ad, local op-ed, legislative pledge, webinar, and kitchen-table explanation reinforce one another.
It is not a universal trick. A wording change cannot remove tuition, childcare, transportation, or political inertia - barriers the Arizona research itself surfaced. Nor does message discipline help when the coalition has not agreed on the underlying goal. Language works as leverage when the evidence is credible, the alternative framing is genuinely more inclusive, and the organization is prepared to change operations as well as copy.
The most valuable communications question may be the one asked before anyone opens the design file.YesPress, on the Collaborative method
From flights to fonts
Event work makes the integration visible. For Girls Build Solutions, a STEM Next Opportunity Fund initiative, Collaborative produced three convenings in Chicago, Atlanta, and San Diego from 2022 to 2024. More than 900 youth leaders, educators, nonprofit professionals, corporate partners, and policymakers participated. The logistical brief included venues, travel, safety, workshops, branded materials, and multi-site production. The strategic brief was harder: let teenagers be co-designers, not decorative guests.
Across the three Girls Build Solutions events, youth participation progressed from facilitation to co-leadership. The visual system stayed recognizable while each city acquired its own texture. By San Diego, nearly 300 participants were working across three venues on technology, climate, health, and space. The repeatable unit was not an identical event. It was a disciplined set of choices about voice, belonging, safety, and continuity.
That explains why Collaborative puts budget tracking, speaker preparation, signage, audience equity, travel, and story arc on one services page. In a convening, the medium is not merely the stage. It is the registration form, the airport pickup, the panel composition, the type size on the wayfinding, and whether a young participant is treated as evidence or as an author.
The moat is made of nouns
The obvious competitors are PR agencies, public-affairs firms, event producers, design studios, and internal communications departments. Collaborative's advantage is the ability to behave like several of them while retaining an education specialist's memory. Its public client list includes the U.S. Department of Education, National 4-H Council, Helios Education Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Search Institute, and numerous state and local organizations.
There is no software flywheel here and no venture-capital story. This is a privately held, fee-for-service consultancy. Growth comes from expertise, repeat work, and a network that can assemble the right project team. Since 2016, for example, the firm has helped Northern Illinois University improve the Illinois Report Card's content and visual usability. That long relationship depends on understanding statutory reporting, education data, agency approval, public accessibility, and the unglamorous craft of updating mockups precisely.
The model travels best when the market is complicated enough to reward accumulated context, and when clients need several disciplines to agree. It travels poorly when a buyer wants a cheap commodity asset, a one-week burst of attention, or a provocative campaign untethered from stakeholder consent. Depth earns its premium only when depth changes the work.
The billable lesson
A reader does not need a 25-year-old consultancy to borrow the operating logic. The playbook is compact, even if executing it is not:
- 01Choose a field, not a demographic. Learn its institutions, incentives, language, and recurring conflicts.
- 02Move communications upstream. Let audience insight affect the strategy before it becomes a launch plan.
- 03Test the noun. If the public resists an idea, find out whether the label is excluding people who support the substance.
- 04Make logistics carry meaning. The room, route, caption, and run of show all tell participants whose experience counts.
- 05Measure before and after. Baseline research catches the wrong premise; results show whether reach became attention or action.
Collaborative's newest extension is “AI with Purpose,” a set of advisory, training, governance, and applied services for mission-driven teams. The phrasing is consistent with the firm's older instinct: new tools should build human capacity rather than substitute for judgment. The initiative includes custom GPTs, AI-assisted campaigns, message testing, and event support, anchored in trust and equity.
The company began with an unfashionable bet that education communications deserved a whole firm. Its quarter-century result does not prove that every niche can sustain one. It proves something more useful: a specialty becomes defensible when it alters who you hire, what you notice, how early you enter the problem, and which details you refuse to call “just execution.” April Fool's Day supplied the punch line. The operating system did the rest.