Ragan Training Communicators Roundtable – 12/4/24: Elevating Employee Newsletters  

Raquel Cool is a former tech journalist turned award-winning executive communications professional. She leads internal communications at Cisco for an organization of nearly 30,000 global employees, mostly engineers. She is passionate about building executive communications programs that are fueled by data, personality, and creative visual storytelling. For more than ten years she has partnered with C-level global technology executives at Fortune 50 companies to deliver strategic communications that inform and inspire. Born in Panama and raised in a tricultural household, she speaks English fluently, Spanish efficiently, and Chinese kitchenly. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her Persian cat, Hummus, often invites himself to her video calls.

Ellen translates inscrutable corporate narratives into compelling human stories. As the head of Cisco's Global Employee Communications editorial team, she cultivates communications strategies that resonate with 85,000+ employees across cultural and generational divides. A former editor-in-chief turned corporate executive, Ellen is now pioneering a trauma-informed approach to employee communications. These methods blend data-driven insights with empathetic storytelling, creating a new framework for connecting with teams in turbulent times. At Cisco, Ellen's team crafts sentiment-based, attention-span-targeted content that informs employees about the company's purpose and strategy, even as the world outside changes daily. Her work has redefined how the company approaches employee communications, earning industry recognition for its effectiveness and sensitivity. Ellen's career spans journalism, healthcare, and tech — and two master’s programs. Based in Portland, Oregon, Ellen brings passion and empathy to her work. When not in slippers in her home office, she's likely researching another degree program, paddling on a river, or listening to Fleetwood Mac.

Alyssa Smith is a content creator, curator, and convention founder. Currently, she serves as director of conferences at Ragan Communications where she recruits speakers for the full array of events, including the signature CommsWeek and Future of Communications Conference. Previously, she was the editorial director of an e-commerce startup, the founder of the New York-based special-effects event CONstruct, a senior editor at Time Inc. (now Dotdash Meredith) and the editor at Hearst Books. For the last two decades, she edited and written under multiple brands and on various platforms, including trade books, digital media, and newsstand products. In 2014, she founded the print Entertainment Weekly specials program, and produced nearly 100 issues over seven years, where she negotiated access to and interviewed high-profile talent... and spent a lot of her time on cover copy. She has written and edited for Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, People, Popular Mechanics, Country Living, the History Channel, LIFE magazine, Time, Veranda, House Beautiful, and many others.