About Roger Sorkin
I'm a strategic communications expert and award-winning filmmaker
For three decades, I've worked on the tough challenge of communicating complicated, contested, and politically sensitive messages to skeptical and adversarial audiences.
My career has centered on the moments where the audience starts out divided or opposed, and where getting the communication wrong carries real consequences.
It’s in those situations that I help people find shared ground on issues they don't naturally agree on, and get organizations to say clearly and consistently what they deliver and what they stand for.
Along the way, I set communication strategy, shape the message, run media and stakeholder engagement, coach senior people into credible public voices, and build internal alignment so a whole organization tells one coherent story. I design and run role-playing and simulation exercises to prepare for high-stakes conversations before they happen, scaling from conferences and company-wide events down to a handful of C-suite executives around a real or virtual table.
As founder of the American Resilience Project, I've produced award-winning documentaries and public engagement campaigns that have convened thousands of policymakers and led to concrete policy outcomes, even in politically challenging environments. These productions serve as convening tools, sometimes described as "white papers disguised as films," and have become springboards to the workshops I've developed that help leaders and advocates become better communicators. My methodology draws from ethnographic research and documentary filmmaking, shaped by studying anthropology at Johns Hopkins and communication at Stanford.
Today I bring that work to mission-driven organizations, whether as a full-time communications leader or in a fractional capacity. I work upstream of marketing to build the foundation that a successful brand, website, launch or policy campaign depends on. I help leadership teams design and implement narrative strategy, and prepare them for the rooms that decide their future – regulators, investors, a hostile planning meeting – helping turn narrative risk into strategic advantage.
I'm most useful where success depends on moving people who hold competing interests or start from different assumptions and values – where trust has to be earned rather than assumed.
Three Principles That Guide My Work
My approach to communication challenges is guided by three core principles:
The same solution, different reasons. People don't need to share identical values to support the same initiative. By identifying where different interests naturally converge, we can build support from stakeholders who might otherwise remain divided.
Emotion matters as much as data. While facts are important, emotional connections create more meaningful relationships with audiences. Authentic storytelling that connects on human levels drives action more effectively than statistics alone.
Narratives are a strategic asset. Communication isn't just what you say–it's the connection between what you do with why you do it. When organizations develop coherent narratives, both internal alignment and external engagement improve dramatically.
