Kristen Grimm
Founder and Strategist
After finding out there were no jobs for Irish history majors, Kristen fell into public interest communications, and then fell in love with it. She started as an intern with a firm that was just finishing up Nelson Mandela’s stadium tour, and a few years and many pitch calls later, became its president. In 2002, deciding the world could use more women-run companies, she started Spitfire Strategies. Her first order of business was to demystify how to do a strategic communication plan and she wrote the Smart Chart®. Over the last two decades, she used concepts from the Smart Chart to help the Ford Foundation build a field for public interest technology; engage tech talent to help the government respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic for the U.S. Digital Response; popularize and make carbon dioxide removal politically potent as a solution for addressing climate impact; worked with Black descendants to power-share oversight of Montpelier, where President Madison wrote the U.S. Constitution; train Patagonia Tools grantees to harness the power of communication; get the Gulf Coast back on its feet after the BP oil spill; and get an accurate count for the latest U.S. Census for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
As @headspitfire, she has created narratives that stick, messages that motivate, theories of influence that shape new laws of the land, campaign and communication strategies that drive momentum and field-building resources that lead to higher impact work.
Over her 30 years doing public interest communications and campaigns, she has worked for clients across issues and across the world including: the Ford Foundation on public interest technology; Census 2020 and human rights in the Global South; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on global health; Patagonia on civic engagement; Living Cities on racial inclusion in the C-suite; the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition on voting reform; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on reversing the trust deficit; Farm to Fork on a safe, healthy food system; Media and Democracy Fund on online privacy; The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights on voting rights; Barr Foundation on transportation and The Aspen Institute on family prosperity.
She is the mastermind behind Spitfire’s Smart Chart®, Planning to Win®,Mindful Messaging, Replenishing Trust™ and Discovering the Activation Point®, among other big think pieces. She thinks fast in a crisis, is deft at drawing phenomenal visionary speeches out of leaders and is someone you want in your corner when you’re ready to go big. When it comes to storytelling, all you need to know is that her last name is Grimm.
She is a go-to counselor for organizations and leaders embarking on organizational change. Whether supporting the first woman president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, working with the United Nations environment and development agencies to craft a climate change platform for the Secretary General, writing speeches, op-eds and testimony for “Orange is the New Black” author Piper Kerman, or working with Greenville, South Carolina leaders to create the political climate for more ambitious public transit, Kristen provides counsel that leads to measurable impact.
When not working, Kristen tours the country in her trailer. Yep, trailer. She lives in a 16-foot trailer with her dog, checking out this country of ours and finding out it is a lot different than they would have us believe on the nightly news.
Kristen has a B.A. from Smith College. She currently serves on the boards of Grist, Edesia, Kallion and the Windward Fund, is on the advisory board for the Narrative Initiative, and is a co-chair for the Impact Guild. She is a member of the 2014 Class of Henry Crown Fellows at The Aspen Institute and serves in the moderator corps for Aspen. She has served as faculty at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire and at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs where she teaches students to do strategic communications well.