Whether talking with employees or the outside world, a strategic approach can help organizations move from messaging to engagement. At 3 Stories, we specialize in inclusive communications strategies, which means we rely on audience insights, involve teams and communities, practice cultural humility and reflect the principles of inclusion, equity and diversity throughout. Informed by almost 25 years in social change PR and brand strategy, it’s a mindset as well as a process — and it creates results.
3 Stories Communications offers an unusual blend of internal and external communications services:
- Diversity and inclusion consulting and internal communications support;
- Strategic communications planning and interim communications leadership for mission-driven organizations; and
- Brand strategy for new and existing entities.
About 3 Stories Founder and Principal, Deanna Troust
Deanna has dedicated her career to developing strategies with and in support of communities that are marginalized and underserved. Drawn to culture since childhood, she spent most of her career at Vanguard Communications, where as a senior vice president she helped lead the firm and developed inclusive social change campaigns that won awards, strengthened organizations and addressed issues affecting Tribal nations, communities of color, individuals with behavioral health needs and more, for clients ranging from GLAD to RTI International.
In 2016 she spread her entrepreneurial wings, started 3 Stories Communications and stepped into the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) space. There she pioneered merging strategic communications and DEI consulting as part of the strategy and assessment team at Cook Ross, helping dozens of clients improve their cultures by talking with employees, developing strategies and conducting trainings on IED communications, storytelling and allyship.
Around the same time, efforts to discredit mainstream sources of information and weaponize social media content awoke a career-altering passion to help tackle what we now call information disorder, or the spread of mis- and disinformation. Deanna provides communications support to NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy project as part of the Mission Partners team and, in recognition of a lack of human-centered approaches, is launching Truth in Common, a community of trust that aligns around shared values and the search for truth.
Deanna sees her DEI and disinformation work as intersectional; in addition to her signature Finding Our Humility workshops she delivers talks on Disinformation: An Equity Issue.
Deanna is a trustee and public affairs lead for DC International School, founded a pandemic-friendly workspace at a neighborhood nonprofit and serves on Session at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church, where she’s leading a multi-year inclusion and racial justice assessment. Deanna is a long-time residents of Washington, DC’s eclectic Adams Morgan neighborhood, where she lives with her Cuban-American husband, two bicultural daughters and a rescue puppy in a turn-of-the-century rowhouse that helped inspire her company name.
Contact Deanna or follow her on LinkedIn or Twitter.