Introducing the Communicating for Impact Masterclass
Today, registration has opened for Hower Impact’s newest training program: The Communicating for Impact Masterclass.
This is an evolution of our Writing for Impact Masterclass, which focuses on helping sustainability and communications professionals improve their writing skills for sustainable business.
Communicating for Impact is, as you might’ve guessed, focused on strategic communication skills for sustainability: what makes a story a story, understanding stakeholder audiences and what they care about, uniting your sustainability and business narratives, and message development and delivery. The course centers around The Four C’s of Effective Sustainability Storytelling, the foundational framework of my book, Sustainability Storytelling: Communicate Trust, Brand Value, and Better Business (Kogan Page 2026). Everyone who takes the class gets a signed copy.
The Fall 2026 Cohort begins on October 29 and runs through November 19. All classes are virtual and will be recorded for students to revisit at their leisure. Think of this as a sustainability communication bootcamp to help you transform into a stronger sustainability storyteller.
Two groups in particular would benefit from this course:
Communications and Marketing Professionals: Communications / Marketing directors, managers, and associates with communication expertise who want to learn how to apply this in a corporate sustainability context.
Sustainability Practitioners: Sustainability directors, managers, and analysts with sustainability subject matter expertise who want to strengthen their strategic communication skills.
Why I created this course
If you’ve followed my work over the years, you know that I’m singularly focused on helping solve corporate sustainability’s storytelling problem. This is both about how companies communicate sustainability and society’s prevailing sustainable business narratives undercutting our collective progress.
Companies struggle with communicating their own sustainability story when they:
Have nothing substantive to talk about.
May be “doing the work” on sustainability but are afraid to fully commit to talking about it due potential social or political blowback (greenhushing).
Are doing the work and may be willing to communicate it—yet remain stuck in the old school marketing mindset of downplaying mistakes and failures while emphasizing wins at the expense of a fully baked, authentic narrative (risking greenwashing).
Don’t have a clear understanding of what their sustainability story is or how to effectively communicate it in a way that’s contextual, compelling, credible, compliant.
Meanwhile, some societal narratives that impede sustainability progress include:
Sustainable business is just a synonym for woke capitalism.
Climate change isn’t real and it’s totally normal for the planet to year-after-year break warming records while people suffer from more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and more.
We must either choose economic prosperity or environmental health.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is bad for business.
Business can solve all of the world’s social and environmental problems without the government’s help.
Companies struggle to communicate sustainability effectively when they lack what I call formal sustainability communicators—professionals with both sustainability subject matter expertise and communication chops. These are folks who feel equally comfortable sitting in on a net zero progress meeting with the sustainability team as they would a marketing strategy call. They might have titles containing both “sustainability” and “communication.”
Most companies don’t have formal sustainability communicators—they rely on what I call informal sustainability communicators to develop and deliver their sustainability story. These usually are communications or marketing generalists who have sustainability as a small part of their remit. Sometimes they’re sustainability practitioners who have to wear a communicator’s hat. Yet because sustainability communications is a highly specialized skillset, it’s hard to do well as a side hustle. When the person or team responsible for communicating sustainability lacks the nuance, knowledge, and skills needed to succeed—they don’t succeed. Often, this leads to greenwashing—intentionally or not—as well as missed opportunities for telling sustainability stories respecting the Four C’s.
One of the reasons I wrote my book, produce my podcast, publish this Substack, and share thoughts on LinkedIn is because I believe supporting informal sustainability communicators is one of the best ways we can help companies improve their sustainability storytelling—while countering those unhelpful anti-sustainability societal narratives.
While I give away much of this knowledge for free or at low cost, I wanted to create a more premium opportunity for informal sustainability communicators and their organizations to invest in their professional development. That’s what the Communicating for Impact Masterclass is all about.
I invite you to join the free information session next Thursday, August 27 at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST. During this session, I’ll walk through the course objectives and structure, while answering any questions you need to understand why this is a worthy investment in your professional development.
Thanks for your continued support—I’ve got several Substack pieces in the works that I’m quite excited about, which I’ve been working on in between the diaper changes and client calls (I sense there’s a consulting joke there, somewhere). More coming soon.
