The Firm That Learned to Count Wins, Not Headlines

The most revealing thing about Jasculca Terman Strategic Communications is a sentence that sounds like it belongs above a mechanic's workbench: never confuse effort with results. It is not lyrical. It does not mention storytelling, disruption, authenticity, or any of the other foggy nouns that communications firms keep in reception. It asks a rude little question. After the meetings, the press calls, the town halls, the films, and the carefully lettered place cards, did anything happen?

The answer has taken some peculiar forms. A caregiver gets a raise. Eight hundred people register for a university forum that used to fit roughly 450. Eighteen communities make art on the same day. A president's family moves through the rituals of a state funeral while the machinery around them stays almost invisible. JT, as the firm calls itself, works in the crowded zone where policy, reputation, public feeling, and logistics refuse to remain separate.

Politics was the prototype

Rick Jasculca and Jim Terman founded the firm in Chicago in 1981. Their useful heresy was to treat public affairs with the discipline of a political campaign. Start with the desired result. Identify who can make it happen. Understand what those people need to hear, and from whom. Then coordinate the message, messenger, venue, camera, coalition, and follow-up.

That sounds obvious only because good strategy becomes obvious after it works. Conventional PR can stop at coverage. A political campaign cannot. Election night supplies a number. JT imported that impatience into work for corporations, foundations, schools, health organizations, nonprofits, and governments. Media relations became one instrument among several, next to grassroots organizing, executive counsel, crisis planning, digital advertising, video, and live events.

This is why the service list is less interesting than the joins between services. Public affairs locates the pressure point. Digital finds a reachable audience. Video gives an abstract issue a human face. An event creates a deadline and a physical scene. Crisis counsel anticipates what could spoil the whole thing. JT sells coordinated professional judgment, generally through projects and ongoing counsel, rather than a packaged product.

The first thing to fail was the first bill

In 2016, the Illinois General Assembly passed a wage increase for direct-service professionals who care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The governor vetoed it. Six nonprofit agencies retained JT for the next attempt. The assignment was beautifully specific: do not let that happen again.

The resulting They Deserve More campaign combined coalition building, media, video, digital outreach, and public affairs. The coalition placed caregivers and families at the center of the argument, giving lawmakers something more difficult to ignore than another institutional statement. In 2017, Illinois approved the first raise those professionals had received in a decade.

“After years of nothing from the state, they were the strategic communications partner who helped generate the first raise we could give to our direct service professionals in a decade.”Jim Haptonstahl, UCP Seguin and They Deserve More

The portable lesson is not “make a video” or “start a coalition.” Those are ingredients. The lesson is to diagnose the earlier failure before repeating the recipe. A message delivered only by organizations became a case carried by workers, families, providers, local voices, and visible public support. The tactics changed because the obstacle was clearer.

A room without walls

The pandemic forced a different change of mind. The UIC Urban Forum had long been a Chicago gathering, drawing about 450 people in person. When the 2021 program on the wealth gap went virtual, geography stopped being a seating chart and became a targeting problem. JT ran paid search and social advertising in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Atlanta, supported by organic content.

The month-long campaign reached more than 546,000 people and produced more than 800 registrations. Virtual did not merely preserve the old event; it expanded access. This is one of the firm's more useful examples because it resists nostalgia. A format that had worked since 2005 was not the sacred object. The purpose was.

The long game can be very long

Some communications work is measured in clicks. Some begins before the internet and ends at the National Cathedral. Jasculca and Terman came from the Carter-Mondale political world and joined planning for Jimmy Carter's eventual state funeral around 1987 or 1988. The plans were revisited every few years. Lauren Foley and Jessica Smith joined that effort in 2006. Walk-throughs, family preferences, military protocol, security, tickets, hotels, transport, former heads of state - the assignment accumulated detail for decades.

When Carter died in December 2024, the plan became an operation. In Washington, JT represented the family while coordinating with the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region, the Secret Service, and other entities. Smith led ticketing and seating. Foley and Jasculca served as co-leads. Karla Bailey handled hotel operations and VIP transport with the military. The family's grief was public; the firm's competence was meant not to be.

The new operating system

JT added an in-house video department in 2010, later expanding it into creative strategy, design, filming, editing, and animation. In 2022 it joined the Public Affairs and Advocacy Alliance, gaining partners in policy centers from Sacramento and Silicon Valley to Atlanta, Houston, Lansing, Albany, and Washington. Those moves answer the obvious weakness of a 20-plus-person independent shop: reach. The firm stays compact, then borrows national scale through networks and integrated production.

Arts For EveryBody shows the current version. Inspired by the Federal Theatre Project, the initiative staged arts projects in 18 communities on July 27, 2024, while researchers examined the link between arts participation and health. JT built the website, made video, created digital channels, coordinated media across local markets, and helped generate more than 200 stories. The work earned a Shorty Impact Award Bronze Honor and one of JT's three Golden Trumpets in 2025.

That year also brought a succession. Mary Patrick retired after 40 years. Jessica Smith, who had started as a JT intern in 2000, became CEO and Managing Partner. Lauren Foley, at the firm since 2004, became COO and Managing Partner. It was less an outsider's reset than an internal handoff: new authority held by people who knew which habits were worth keeping.

The useful bits to steal

Begin with a result written in a sentence that can be proved or disproved. Give every channel one job. Recruit messengers who possess standing with the audience, not merely fame. Design the event and the communications together. Build a measurement loop soon enough to change course. And, when a familiar format stops serving the purpose, keep the purpose.

There are limits. This style of work depends on a definable decision, audience, or behavior; access to credible participants; and enough time to build trust. It will not rescue a policy nobody can defend, substitute for operational competence, or manufacture community consent after the decisions have already been made. A campaign can organize attention. It cannot make the underlying offer honest.

That may be why JT's plain little rule has lasted longer than most agency slogans. Effort is comforting because it is visible to the people doing it. Results belong to everyone else. The discipline is remembering whom the work is for.