The New Watercoolers: Intranets, Town Halls and Collaborative Gathering Spaces

Steve Neruda is a corporate communications professional with over 30 years experience. Neruda has spent his entire professional career at Motorola Inc. and Motorola Solutions (with a short detour at Google when it bought Motorola's Mobility business). After a quick and forgettable decade in Finance, he changed his focus from numbers to words, and has never regretted the decision. In his current role, on any given day he may serve as writer, publisher, content developer, tech support, grammar police, HTML and graphic designer, live event wrangler, statistician, video production crew, Oxford comma defender, or town hall host. He likes his gig. Recently, Neruda managed the implementation of a broadcast email design-and-delivery tool (10 million emails delivered to employees in its first 13 months), and oversaw the re-design and migration of our corporate newsroom to bring its hosting in house. Neruda earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Illinois, and an MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. Outside of work, he is an 80s hairband enthusiast, visits Las Vegas on the regular, and lives vicariously through his two adult daughters.

Brittany Hoerdeman (she/her) is a Senior Manager of business communications and public affairs at Grainger. In this role, she is responsible for leading major communication and change initiatives, creating communication insights and enhancing Grainger’s brand and reputation. With 15 years of experience, Hoerdeman excels in communication channel management and transformation, reputation management, and people leadership. Most recently, she managed the implementation of a global communication platform to over 20,000 team members, established an editorial process and led a team responsible for organic social, enterprise communication and design. Prior to joining Grainger, Hoerdeman worked at Harley-Davidson Financial Services where she enhanced the team member experience through new communication technologies and led several change initiatives. Hoerdeman has a Master of Arts in International Relations and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Eastern Illinois University. W. W. Grainger, Inc. is a member of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.

Jordan Weathers is Manager of Communications at Southwire. Since joining the organization in 2012, he has served in a variety of roles — editing the company’s printed newsletter and leading the transition to an online format, sending the company’s daily email blast with an audience of more than 3,000 employees, writing articles and executive communications, leading the visual production team, providing HR support for Southwire’s functional teams and international sites and acting as project manager for the entire communications department. In his current position, Weathers oversees a talented team of writers and graphic designers — and manages relationships with a number of vendors — to achieve Southwire’s internal and external communication objectives. In 2022, he coordinated a successful relaunch of quarterly town hall events for President and CEO Rich Stinson and other executive leaders and led the roll-out of a quarterly “continuous listening” cadence for the company’s engagement survey. Most recently, he managed the release of the company’s mobile app and communication platform, Southwire Circuit. Weathers holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from the University of West Georgia (UWG), where he served as News Editor for the college newspaper, and he has been an election stringer for the Associated Press for more than 10 years. Outside of work, he likes to read, build LEGO, play board games, visit National Parks and have fun with his wife and two young children.