A career built on impact
Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Building a best-in-class team
The challenge:
Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center had a world-class clinical enterprise and a divided communications, marketing, and digital strategy function that needed to grow to match it — in scale, sophistication, and team culture.
The work:
As the health system’s first enterprise CCMO, Skip integrated three previously separate and siloed teams into the medical center’s first unified and centralized marketing, communications, and digital strategy department.
He created an owned media enterprise, built Ohio State Health & Discovery, the health system’s first digital brand storytelling platform and content engine, and drove measurable improvements in consumer engagement and brand awareness.
In the final chapter of his five-year tenure, he guided the 135-member department through a full upskilling and generative AI transformation, improving creativity, strategic thinking, and efficiency.
The result:
A department operating at significantly greater efficiency, with AI-augmented workflows across brand storytelling, communications, user experience, analytics, and growth marketing. And substantial, measurable growth in brand awareness and patient revenue.
University of Chicago Medicine
Crafting a master brand
The challenge:
The University of Chicago Medicine had extraordinary depth in clinical care, science, and research, but a fragmented brand story and ineffective marketing. Multiple service lines, multiple audiences, multiple messages — and no single narrative thread connecting them to the patients and communities they served.
The work:
Skip led the development of the UChicago Medicine master brand and its accompanying architecture. He created The Forefront brand storytelling website and content engine. He built back-to-back consumer brand campaigns that unified the UChicago Medicine story across paid, earned, social, and owned media channels. The second campaign — “Sickness is relentless. So are we.” — won a Chicago Regional Emmy Award for Best TV Commercial in 2021.
The result:
A cohesive master brand platform. Emmy-winning creative. Measurable digital growth. And a brand story that, for the first time, matched the clinical reality of one of America’s greatest academic medical centers.
Ascension Via Christi
Brand Growth & Public Service
The challenge:
Via Christi Health, operating within the Ascension system, needed to grow its brand presence in competitive Kansas markets while also responding to a public health issue with communications as complex as the issue itself.
The work:
Skip led regional brand strategy and multichannel growth campaigns that extended Via Christi’s presence and deepened community trust. He led a multi-disciplinary team that built the health system’s modern website and Via Christi Life, an owned media storytelling platform with a website, magazine, and integrated social media engagement.
Separately, he helped develop and implement the nation’s first protocol to train emergency department clinicians to identify human trafficking victims — coupled with a comprehensive communications program that became a national model for healthcare-based advocacy.
The result:
Measurable brand growth. An anti-human trafficking training program that became a national model for other health systems. And an enduring example of what healthcare brand communications can accomplish when advocating for patients in need.
The Journalism Years: AP & Gannett
Honing the craft of storytelling
Before healthcare, Skip worked for many years as a journalist — as a reporter, writer, and editor for some of the biggest names in media: Knight Ridder, The Associated Press and Gannett.
He covered government and political campaigns, natural disasters when tornadoes and hurricanes struck, and crimes ranging from corruption to mass shootings.
His forte was human-centered storytelling that moved readers to action and high-impact public service investigations that led to policy changes. His work won dozens of state and national awards.
He also developed an eye for finding stories that make an impact and help improve lives, a discipline that has shaped everything he has done since.
Skip’s journalism experience isn’t a line on a bio. It is the source code for every brand story, content strategy, and transformation plan that W. Clair Communications produces.
StoryPower
Connecting Passion to Purpose
A column from W. Clair Communications on the intersection of brand strategy, leadership, storytelling, and AI. Connecting your team members’ passion to your organization’s purpose builds trusted brands, one moment at a time.