January 18, 2022

Empathy, Advocacy, & Truth with Carolyn Clark, Head of Internal Communications and Employer Brand at Opendoor

50 minutes

This episode features an interview with Carolyn Clark, Head of Internal Communications and Employer Brand at Opendoor. Previously, Carolyn was the senior director of internal communications at GoDaddy and held senior internal comms roles at Pandora and Yahoo!.

On today’s episode, Carolyn shares what it was like working on SNL & Late Night with Conan O’Brien, why she started her own comms consulting company, and valuable case studies from her career and teachings in crisis comms.

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“In order to speak the language of engineering leaders, or even your CEO and your C-suite, you’ve got to understand what makes them tick and put it in front of them. And I think that means developing different strategies. Even if your ultimate strategy is the same or your goal on how you approach it and you get buy-in is going to differ. So I would also ask them, ‘what matters to you?’ That’s one of the things and advantages if you’re new somewhere is saying ‘what matters to you?’” — Carolyn Clark

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Episode Timestamps:

*(2:14) - How Carolyn got into internal communications

*(4:16) - Highlight reel of where Carolyn’s worked

*(7:36) - Carolyn’s current role at Opendoor

*(9:29) - Segment: Story Time

*(14:02) - Carolyn’s most proud moments at Yahoo!

*(15:59) - Segment: Getting Tactical

*(21:32) - The role of internal comms with M&A

*(29:40) - Starting After Ever Communications

*(32:28) - How to get leaders engaged in internal communications

*(37:14) - Segment: Ripped From the Headlines