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Seasoned corporate communications counselor with deep experience at managing all aspects…
Articles by Cris
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Even More Advice On Staying Sane During a Job Search
Even More Advice On Staying Sane During a Job Search
I was just talking to a friend today who told me they got laid off after an acquisition and were having to look for a…
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Cris Paden shared thisI was doin’ just fine today going about my job search, and then about 1pm when I heard Dolly passed it just took the wind out of my sails. The thing about Dolly is a) the incredible courage and tenacity she had to fight amongst the “man’s world” of country music for decades (and it’s still Iike that today), is something that everyone should study and be aware of about her and how she navigated that successfully. I particularly think of that with regards to women in the tech industry and the challenges they face. I’m sure there’s a lot of guys they’d like to “change from a rooster to a hen” as she said in “9 to 5,” 😎. And B, she was an incredible entrepreneur with an amazing head for business and management at the global corporate level in an incredibly public way. The The Wharton School should establish a class about Dolly’s business acumen. There’s not a better story, man or woman. There are lessons to be learned from her for everyone from all walks of life, and that includes in business and the corporate world. Dolly’s gone. My Lord, Dolly’s gone.
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Cris Paden shared thisI feel sorry for the corp comm teams and agencies who are tasked with handling the data center issue on behalf of Big Tech. You can’t PR your way out of this, not with an issue that brings together conservatives, liberals, environmentalists, rich, poor, you name it. This thing is a freight train. The best you can do is a) lock down the deals that are in place right now and focus on local media outreach to put lipstick on the pig with how much money the company will dump into the local economy, education, and transportation systems, etc., b) hold on for dear life until the election, lay low, and try not aggravate candidates of both parties, c) draw up comms plans right now taking into account every conceivable election scenario, including forecasting who will head up what committees and where they are located; don’t take a wait and see attitude and dream it up after Election Day; and d) try and lean on various public policy consortiums and let them be the public face of the data center effort and try to minimize association with just one company. But right now you’ve got a pissed off electorate with regards to the economy, and the data center effort has become the piñata for a whoooole lot of grievances out there. Again, I feel for the comms personnel who are tasked with trying to communicate to execs in no uncertain terms how bad this issue is, and getting tech execs to give up on the idea of “can’t these people see how they’re going to benefit from what we’re doing?!” Haha! That savior mentality is a tough thing to combat. Rule number one in politics: meet the voters where they are. Whether you like it or not, you have to meet them where they are and start there, no matter how tough it is. Or else you’re wind up talking right past them and making them feel like they’re not heard and wind up pissing them off more than they already are, if that’s possible. Sending the sign of the cross to all comms people dealing with this issue. https://lnkd.in/g-JsTiFx
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Cris Paden reposted thisCris Paden reposted thisOn this day 75 years ago, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, marking the beginning of an extraordinary legal career and a lasting legacy. After her landmark fight to gain admission to the College of Law, she became a trailblazing attorney, educator, and champion for equal access to education. Her courage helped reshape legal education in Oklahoma and beyond, inspiring generations of future lawyers. Today, we honor Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher's remarkable legacy and the enduring impact of her pursuit of justice.
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Cris Paden reposted thisCris Paden reposted thisOne step. One mile. One dollar. One team. Last weekend, my family and friends — Team Marasco — laced up alongside 50 other Team Fox runners and walkers at the Sonoma Rosé 5k and half marathon. Together, we raised +$80,000 for The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. That’s what happens when people take action and move together. When you pair courage with community, even seemingly small actions compound into something impactful. Parkinson’s affects more than 10 million people worldwide. A cure won’t come from one breakthrough alone — it will come from thousands of people choosing to do one thing. Run one race. Give one dollar. Show up one time. And then do it again. I believe the most challenging problems are solved the same way, not by one person with all the answers, but by a team that commits to action together. That’s true in research. It’s true in work. It’s true in life. When we take action with love and purpose together, all things are possible. To the Team Fox community 🧡, thank you for showing up, running the distance and reminding all of us what resilience and purpose in motion look like. See you next year! Donate here 🦊 https://lnkd.in/gT3adeSd #teammarasco #teamfoxmjff #mjff #parkinsonsresearch #laceupandfeelbetter #bettertogether #napatosonoma #sonomarose5k @napa2sonomahalf
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Cris Paden reposted thisCris Paden reposted thisA recruiter called me last week about a comms director role. Here's everything they wanted one person to own: Team management. Content strategy. Executive thought leadership. Attribution modeling. Internal communications. Media relations. Other stuff I don't even remember. The base was capped at $120K. You read that correctly. That's not a job. That's five jobs in a trench coat, priced like half of one. And I'm not writing this because I got butt hurt on a phone call. I'm writing it because I've watched the movie end the same way too many times. Here's what happens next. You can't get a seasoned operator to run five functions for $120K. So you hire the person stretching to fit the title. They're underwater by month two. The exec thought leadership never ships. The media relationships never get built. Internal comms becomes "send the all-hands email." They burn out or get managed out by month nine. Now you're paying a recruiter another 20%. Eating another quarter of ramp. Explaining to your team why the last hire didn't work out. You didn't save tens of thousands. You burned it several times over. Pay nice, or pay twice. The real tell was never the number. It's the job description. Which actually hadn’t been written when I’d been called. When a company crams five distinct disciplines into one seat, they're not being lean. They're telling you they don't actually know what comms is or what it's for. That should scare any leader. Because whoever you eventually hire owns how the market, your candidates, and your investors hear your story. You do not want that to be the person who said yes to five-jobs-for-one because they had no leverage to say no. I said to the recruiter, “You want my frank advice? This is utterly psychotic.” In fairness, they said, “I know.”
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Cris Paden shared thisThis story reminds me of scene from a movie called “Cinderella Man,” which came out in 2005 and was based on a heavyweight fighter back in the 1930s named James Braddock and how he overcome injuries and unemployment against all odds to regain the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. Paul Giamatti played his manager, and there was a scene where he was pleading the case of Braddock to a fight promoter. When Giamatti’s character finished making his pitch, the fight promoter looked at him a long time and finally said, “They oughtta put your mouth in the circus.” That’s what I was thinking of as far as how these execs managed to move on and talk other companies and organizations into hiring them. From a crisis comms perspective, it doesn’t take much to fob off inquiries. You just mention “ongoing litigation” and that’s it. Ain’t much. But for the folks who were a part of this and found someone willing to hire them again? Now that’s the real trick. https://lnkd.in/ecYJKBEfThey Were Terrorized by a Tech Company. When Will They See Justice?They Were Terrorized by a Tech Company. When Will They See Justice?
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisThe key to making a great impression is speaking with strength and confidence from the start. It’s easy to begin speaking with filler words, but we risk appearing like we’re not confident or not sure about what we’re saying. Say no to filler words and instead, say what you really mean.
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked this🤖 AI can answer faster than you. Can it advise better? That's the question on the table when I join the Advisory Board Centre MegaTrends Summit panel on October 9, on agentic AI and what it means for how business gets done. Advisors who punch above their weight now won't win on speed. They'll win on judgment. With Aaron Zamykal 🚀, Carlo G. Santoro, Lina Wynn 🐉 黄渼惠, and Andrew. 🙏 to Advisory Board Centre for the invite. Harpswell Bill Schmarzo Reykjavík Global Forum WAKE
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisWow, shots fired. This is pretty extreme, but you know, if you keep acting like the rules don't apply to you, after a while people will stop doing business with you because it impacts their bottom line to do so. https://lnkd.in/gq7WsqSdOur decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXOur decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisYou never really know what someone is carrying into the room. One of the most important parts of being a coach is taking the time to really understand where someone is. Last week, I spoke with someone who shared a challenge that continues to affect his day-to-day life years after a difficult experience. It impacts his energy. It affects how he manages his workday. And it is something he has to continually navigate while still trying to perform, grow and move forward in his career. It was a good reminder that everyone is carrying something. The people we see as successful. The leaders who seem to have it all together. The person sitting across from you in a meeting. You often don’t know what they’re managing behind the scenes. And that’s why coaching can’t be one-size-fits-all. My job isn’t to tell someone, “Here’s what you need to do. Go do it.” It’s to understand where they are, what they’re dealing with, where they want to go and help them see a path forward that works for them. Having challenges doesn’t mean you can’t achieve what you want. Sometimes you just need someone to help you see new possibilities. Jim Rohn said it beautifully: “The greatest contribution we can make to the life of another—to enable them to feel new hope, sense new emotions and see new possibilities.”
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisOne of the persistent critiques of quantum computing has been that real-world noise may be too correlated, too adversarial, or too unpredictable for fault tolerance to work at scale. A new paper from Nikolas Breuckmann, Louis Golowich, and Umesh Vazirani of UC Berkeley pushes back on that assumption in a significant way. Their paper, Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Adversarial Errors, proves a fault-tolerance theorem under substantially stronger noise assumptions than many prior approaches, including adversarial and non-Markovian error models. "From a foundational perspective, our strong robustness addresses a concern raised by skeptics of quantum computing, who have argued against its feasibility by pointing out that correlated noise could fundamentally undermine fault tolerance [Lev03, Kal11, Kal16]. The concern is that physical noise need not satisfy the locality and independence assumptions underlying existing fault-tolerance theorems, and that uncontrolled degrees of freedom could place the environment in “devilish states capable of conspiracies which defy imagination” [Lev00]. Our result directly addresses this concern: we show that fault-tolerant quantum computation is possible even if nature conspires against us. An adversary with full knowledge of the circuit and the ability to apply coherent, correlated errors to an almost-linear number of qudits at every time step cannot prevent the computation from succeeding." The broader implication is noteworthy: This research further narrows the argument that there is a physics-based fundamental barrier preventing large-scale quantum computation. Significant engineering and commercial scaling challenges remain as practical fault-tolerant quantum computing systems are still a work in progress. That observation captures much of modern scientific progress. Researchers build models, nature breaks them, and innovation emerges from constructing better ones. For those of us thinking about the future of AI-assisted quantum invention, this work is another reminder that breakthroughs often occur when researchers challenge foundational assumptions rather than simply optimizing existing systems. The intersection of: • Quantum error correction • Adversarial robustness • Advanced AI-assisted discovery tools • Quantum-IP strategy is becoming increasingly important to both researchers and technology investors. Worth reading for anyone following the long-term path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. https://lnkd.in/gdMH9jX5 #QuantumComputing #QuantumAI #Innovation #Patents #IntellectualProperty #FutureOfTechnology #UCBerkeley #SimonsInstitute #BerkeleyLawFault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Adversarial ErrorsFault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Adversarial Errors
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Cris Paden liked thisAI is changing the cybersecurity landscape—and not just by making attacks more sophisticated. The same technology that can accelerate the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities can also fundamentally improve how we defend against them. That creates both an opportunity and a responsibility for the technology community. I’m encouraged to see companies coming together around a simple but important idea: cybersecurity cannot be solved in isolation. We need collaboration across technology companies, security teams, researchers, governments and customers. For those of us building and governing AI-enabled businesses, this is particularly important. We need to be thinking not only about what AI can do, but about how we deploy it responsibly to make the digital ecosystem more resilient. AI can help us find vulnerabilities earlier, detect threats faster, investigate incidents more effectively and respond with greater precision. The question is whether we will move quickly enough—and collectively enough—to put those capabilities to work. This is an important call to action, and one I’m proud to see Elastic supporting.Cris Paden liked thisElastic is supporting OpenAI's call for collective action on cyber defense. The same advances in AI that are changing the threat landscape can also change what’s possible for defenders. This is why, across the security community, we have the opportunity to put AI to work where it can make a real difference by helping teams uncover vulnerabilities sooner, detect and investigate issues faster, and respond to threats with greater speed and precision. Elastic is committed to doing our part with an open approach to security - as always. Read the open letter: https://go.es.io/4gGrwz1
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisBringing a lil' joy, creativity and better bottles to the fight against climate change. Meet the new @drinkbivo x @protectourwinters x @sarahsturmy collab bottle, a custom printed bottle rooted in a deep love and appreciation for the outdoors, the belief that biking is so much more than a sport, and a commitment to doing everything we can to protect the spaces where we love to recreate. Designed by cyclist and POW alliance member Sarah Sturm, this bottle embodies everything we love about the outdoors and the community that comes along with it: mountains, bikes, nature, snow, and having a damn good time outdoors! Bivo is proud to be donating 40% of the profits from this bottle to POW to further their mission of climate advocacy. Available today on Bivo’s website, POW’s website, REI and local bike shops near you! https://lnkd.in/edgEkZuw 🎨: @sarahsturmy 📸: @gpowersfilm #protectourwinters
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisI had a lot of fun this month working on my first vibe coding project with support of colleagues at Orchestra, particularly Tiffany Darmetko and Ben Worthen. I won't share it here, but it's a snazzy dashboard for tracking bills and legislative updates in the states. I may not love the use of AI for writing, but for coding, it's actually very useful.
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Cris Paden liked thisCris Paden liked thisA useful question before any important meeting: “What do I want this person to think about me when the meeting is over?” Not: “How do I prove I know my stuff?” Your reputation is being formed in every interaction. Make sure you’re sending the signal you intend. You’re already up for the task, so let your confidence shine.
Experience & Education
Licenses & Certifications
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Ordained Wedding Minister
American Marriage Ministries (AMM)
IssuedCredential ID Minister ID: 1659374
Volunteer Experience
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Member Board Of Directors
Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence
- Present 9 years 5 months
Social Services
Provide media relations and social media communications support to raise awareness about Next Door's programs to combat domestic violence that serve the Santa Clara County community in the South Bay Area of California.
Languages
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English
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Organizations
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Cherokee Nation
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- PresentMember of the Cherokee Nation
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