In the world of executive communications, where polished messaging often masks authentic connection, Kristin Ebanks stands as a transformative force who believes that the most powerful leadership comes not from authority alone, but from the courage to lead with both strength and heart. Her journey from a small town with limited diversity to advising C-suite executives at one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations reveals a story of relentless curiosity, unwavering faith, and a deep commitment to making the world better through the power of human connection.
Two threads have woven through Kristin’s life since childhood: a burning desire to make the world a better place by helping others, and an irrepressible need to tell meaningful stories. These twin passions would eventually converge into a career that has touched millions of lives, not directly, but through the amplified influence of the leaders she has guided.
Growing up in a small town where most people followed predictable paths, Kristin knew without doubt that she was meant for something different. Her first ticket to the wider world came through attending a liberal arts university in a big city. “While at university, my entire world changed because I saw that I could be anybody I wanted to be and do anything I wanted to do,” she reflects. “There was no longer a cap on my life experiences.”
Her study abroad experience in Australia marked what she calls “the end of the innocent me,” stretching her in many different ways. The transformation was so profound that she returned to her university and won a grant to conduct her own research study on acculturation in students who study abroad.
She continued her educational journey with a Master’s degree in International Service. This led her to Jamaica and England, where she studied the effects of colonization, ethnic tensions, and migration on culture as well as how being the colonizer impacts a nation, while deepening her understanding of nonprofit management and global governance.
Throughout these formative experiences, Kristin processed her growth through daily written reflections shared with friends, professors, and family. Writing became her way of connecting themes of people, places, culture, knowledge, and growth. It remains her primary tool for inspiring others today.
THE BIRTH OF HUMAN-CENTERED LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION
The vision that would define Kristin’s career emerged during her tenure at World Vision International, where she spent two decades serving in the humanitarian sector. Working alongside colleagues who felt many different kinds of pressures that come with this kind of work, she recognized something others had missed: leaders had a grand opportunity to become more sensitive to the human experience of the teams they were leading.
“I recall feeling somewhat alone in my hope that our experience could be different in the workplace,” Kristin recalls. She observed for a long time how leaders communicated messages in various ways, and how staff responded to them. It was clear a new approach was needed.
Where others avoided working with leaders, Kristin consistently volunteered. She had empathy for them and believed she could show them a better way to communicate. This conviction launched her journey into executive communications, and she never looked back.
Her approach was shaped by a value instilled by her mother: “there is genius in everyone.” One of Kristin’s earliest teachers told her mother that young Kristin was “gifted,” a label that bewildered her at the time. As an adult, Kristin came to understand what the teacher truly saw: unique strengths that needed amplification to benefit the world.
“When I say I believe ‘there is genius in everyone,’ that reflects my love for humanity, the people God has created, and my appreciation for each person’s unique giftings that can make the world a better place,” Kristin explains. This philosophy permeates her work with leaders, where she excels at recognizing their gifts and maximizing them. She listens to their stories and helps them share the ones that have shaped their lives, pointing out opportunities where they should lean in and connect with their staff.
STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS: FROM INVISIBLE SERVICE TO VISIBLE IMPACT
For years, Kristin worked quietly behind the scenes to support leaders by crafting messages, shaping stories, and writing compelling articles to influence audiences. As someone deeply service-oriented, she wanted to ensure this generated the highest form of confidence in leaders.
“This is a struggle that people in my position have, as we serve senior leaders,” she acknowledges. “We feel we must accept anonymity to do our jobs.”
Eventually she realized that while protecting confidentiality is paramount, being invisible benefits no one. Kristin developed a counter-measure to build her personal brand by sharing publicly how she worked with executives, without mentioning specific details. She launched her own newsletter and wrote reflections about leadership lessons while also producing videos teaching leadership lessons. The transformation was remarkable.
This evolution reflects a deeper truth about her identity as a leader. Having spent her career viewing herself as talented and hardworking but lacking formal authority, she is now coming to terms with what others have said all along: she is a leader too. Her influence grew through informal authority as people came to respect both who she was as a person and the impact of her work. She discovered she could influence top leaders because she could imagine an alternate world at work and had the courage to bring it to life.
TRANSFORMING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE ON THE GLOBAL STAGE
During her time at World Vision International, Kristin supported Andrew Morley, President and CEO, and other global C-suite leaders with strategic communications, both internally and externally. Her impact was broad and deep, helping these leaders to amplify their voices on issues affecting millions of children worldwide.
With President Andrew Morley, she had a vision that he could build a tremendous platform on LinkedIn to raise his external profile. She made the business case, wrote a comprehensive strategy, and championed new approaches driven by personal branding, storytelling, and video. The results spoke volumes: growth from 6,000 followers to over 47,000. She also developed thought leadership pieces that elevated his reputation as a leader in safeguarding and children’s nutrition.
Working with Chief Field Operations Officer Jean Baptiste Kamate, Kristin positioned him to speak at the UN Water Conference and helped him to prepare to moderate a high-level meeting at the World Bank in support of the 21st replenishment of the International Development Association, which was successful in securing a historic $100 billion to help developing nations.
Her work with Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Marcus Frost focused on transforming team culture internally. Together, they implemented initiatives to improve leader visibility, developed a more psychologically safe environment, and built trust in leadership through opportunities for staff to give regular feedback and speak one-on-one with leaders.
In her final months at World Vision, Kristin championed video storytelling with remarkable vision and determination. Knowing the impact of this type of communication from having integrated it into her leadership communications work, she sought to build capacity across the organization by focusing on the top 100 leaders. Her pitch was compelling: video storytelling would advance their personal brands, which would in turn elevate the organization’s brand.
THE BRENÉ BROWN OF LEADER COMMUNICATIONS
A colleague once referred to Kristin as “the Brené Brown of leader communications,” which resonated with her because her work focuses on the same foundational elements that define Brené Brown’s research: courage, vulnerability, and empathy. These facets of human behavior form the core of what Kristin calls heart-first leadership, which she distils into being gracious with yourself and toward others while demonstrating compassion and kindness in your work.
What set Kristin apart from many communicators was her approach. When the emphasis was often on communicating facts, perfecting the timing, and securing the approvals of messages, she placed a premium on how messages would be interpreted by receivers. This required leaders to share their struggles at times and consider the feelings of their staff. “I always applied the ‘human lens’ to everything we did in leadership communication,” she explains.
This human-centered approach addresses what Kristin identifies as the most critical challenge facing executives worldwide today: compromising on principle. In environments where money is tight and needs are high, particularly in the humanitarian sector, she sees a risk of leaders bending toward directions they think they ought to go for the sake of the organization but moving away from where their hearts tell them to lead.
“This starts to look like a lack of integrity, an absence of authentic expression, and a loss of aspects of their humanity,” Kristin observes.
She says this boils down to a crisis of courage. Communications advisors can equip, negotiate, and prepare leaders, but ultimately the leader must decide what action to take. It must be courageous, principled, and full of heart and wisdom. This reality drives much of Kristin’s thought leadership about leader characteristics. She firmly believes leaders must grow as human beings to lead to the best of their ability.
FINDING THE AUTHENTIC VOICE: BALANCING STRENGTH WITH HEART
Kristin’s framework for helping leaders find their authentic voice centers on what she calls communicating with both strength and heart. Strength reflects authority, confidence, timely truth-telling, and strategic clarity. Staff look to their leaders like the captain of a ship, wanting to know where the team is headed, why, and how they will get there.
But strength alone fails to meet all staff needs. They also expect heart, which reflects vulnerability and authenticity. Staff want to know how the leader feels about team culture, whether they share concerns and doubts about new initiatives, or if they too feel bewildered by constant change.
“Therefore, a leader’s voice must be multi-dimensional and ever-adaptive to the changing needs of those they serve,” Kristin explains. This requires emotional intelligence and self-awareness, where leaders understand aspects of themselves that can inspire or diminish trust from others.
She helps them grow in this awareness through her own observations and feedback collected from data and conversations with staff. This is why she believes leaders need a partner to work with. She also helps them find sensitive and compelling ways to communicate their messages so they can best be received by staff. “This way, leaders stay true to themselves but they have more success in bringing others along with them because they’ve more carefully considered the message.”
One of the areas where leaders struggle most is personal branding, particularly in the humanitarian industry. It takes time for them to understand the benefit. Some might resist because they believe the organization’s strong brand is sufficient, or because they fear their noble work might be hijacked by perceptions of self-interest. Even when leaders commit to personal branding, implementation can be challenging if there are reservations about sharing more of their thoughts, feelings, and life outside of work.
FAITH AS FOUNDATION: SEEING LEADERS THROUGH A GODLY LENS
Faith forms the bedrock of Kristin’s leadership philosophy and how she guides others. She sees leaders through what she calls a Godly lens, standing with them and for them, wanting them to succeed and steward good work for the benefit of others. But just as God is always working on people, leaders must always work on themselves.
She works hard to become a trusted partner of leaders, absorbing some of their challenges and encouraging them to evolve into the best version of themselves. With a growth mindset, she believes in discussing difficult things that others might avoid. When she sees broken relationships in the workplace that might involve leaders, she brings this up. When she sees actions that appear misaligned, she tries to model a different way to inspire them.
Over the years, she has observed that leadership styles built on principles of faith including forgiveness, stewardship, humility, righteousness, generosity, and gratitude are more likely to stand the test of time. She believes that if the foundation is weak, the house will fall, so she encourages leaders to spend time in prayer seeking God’s direction and discernment. That is where they will find their answers.
THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT: INFLUENCING MILLIONS THROUGH LEADERS
Kristin’s life-long ambition to help as many people as possible led her to a powerful realization: working with leaders provides a faster path to global impact. Leaders have enormous power, influence, and authority in shifting the currents of the world. They are often well-resourced and well-connected, ambitious and competent. A shift in a leader’s mindset, a change of heart, or a positive result from a new approach can create ripples affecting countless lives.
Beyond influencing how leaders think and feel, she helps them develop more tools to be effective in their communication so they can succeed in their pursuits. The executives she worked with were meeting with world leaders who were making hugely consequential decisions impacting millions of children around the world. They were giving speeches on world stages, discussing key partnerships with leaders of UN agencies, and having one-on-one conversations with presidents and prime ministers.
“The right story, the right words, the right amount of humanity could inspire actions that could change the trajectory of children’s lives,” Kristin reflects. “This might mean securing more funding or developing new policies. I felt the enormity of what I did. The stakes were always high. We needed to take advantage of the best opportunities to cultivate change.”
Her two decades in the international humanitarian sector fundamentally shaped her worldview in profound ways. It gave her purpose for the work she does on earth. It gave her a burden on the heart to empathize with the sufferings of people around the world. Living with privilege while most people don’t, she learned to prioritize what truly matters: what children need to survive, what families need to thrive, and what communities need to strengthen so people feel included, safe, and empowered.
LEADTRUE: A NEW CHAPTER IN COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP
Starting her own business was a natural evolution from Kristin’s work at World Vision, where she was highly entrepreneurial as the Director of Leader Communications. As a visionary and builder who creates new ways of doing business and designs impactful approaches, she thrives on challenges and pushing herself far outside her comfort zone.
Kristin consistently moved into roles at World Vision that allowed her to influence more people. The beauty of starting her own business is the opportunity to shatter her own ceiling. This reflects the expansion that keeps happening in her life, bringing her closer to her dream of impacting as many people as she can in her lifetime.
“I’m thrilled that I am now helping more leaders around the world,” Kristin shares. “There’s also a feeling of satisfaction that I am building something beautiful from the ground up and I have more ownership over my future growth.”
The mission of LeadTrue is to empower leaders to grow in influence and authority, internally and externally, through compassionate communication. She partners with leaders to best equip them to lead with heart, strength, and faith.
Her vision is that leaders will develop a better understanding of the importance of excelling in leadership communication and strengthen their capacity and commitment to connecting with their audiences through heart-first leadership. Her ultimate hope is that leaders grow as human beings while they lead, reaching their greatest potential.
LeadTrue addresses a gap she noticed in her very first year working with an executive: a disconnect between leaders and their audiences, whether with staff or with the public. She works diligently and with a laser focus to close that gap through strong strategic communication, achieving success beyond her highest hopes.
THE LEADTRUE DIFFERENCE: HEART-DRIVEN STRATEGY AND AUTHENTIC CONNECTION
LeadTrue values authenticity, human connection, vulnerability, honesty, and people-first communication. Everything Kristin sets out to do reflects a commitment to upholding those values.
There is a clear demand for the kind of work she is doing with leaders, as many organizations are hiring senior communications advisors to support their executives with personal branding, thought leadership, and leader positioning. LeadTrue’s unique value proposition centers on helping leaders to communicate with authenticity and humanity to better attract support for their organization and advance its mission.
Her personal branding service has a strong emphasis on storytelling to captivate an audience and build trust. She also offers thought leadership support to help leaders influence the public, enabling them to be seen as much more than just figureheads for their organizations.
Her ideal approach with clients involves conducting a communications assessment to assess problems and opportunities. Then she develops a strategy focused on solutions and begins implementing it. She tracks performance to help leaders understand what approaches work best, helping them move from strength to strength.
Kristin is adept at managing a broad portfolio since her background is in supporting numerous top executives with setting vision and strategy for their internal and external communications, then bringing plans to life through her own hands or in collaboration with others. This means she offers end-to-end strategic communications planning, strategy, and execution.
Kristin is targeting leaders of humanitarian and nonprofit organizations because that is the desire of her heart. She is motivated to live a lifetime of service, and not by fame or fortune.
LEGACY, BALANCE, AND THE PATH FORWARD
Kristin encourages leaders to consider the legacy they want to leave and actively work toward achieving that now, instead of waiting for others to define it for them. Her own legacy is tied to her mission, vision, values, and faith. She wants her time on earth to be about doing good works and helping others succeed in the things that matter most.
“I want to inspire as many people as I can to lead with integrity and to be guided by the Lord,” Kristin shares. “He is where I take my inspiration from. I simply want to be a channel or a vessel for Him to shine through me.”
Kristin recalls being told by someone that she is a light. To her, that is a sign that she is on the right track, because her vision is to let the Lord shine through her in every way possible. Whatever she does professionally, she wants to do it with care for other people. She knows if she follows the Lord, she can’t go wrong.
As a values-driven person, Kristin regularly takes times to reflect on how she’s feeling in numerous domains of her life: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. She challenges herself to reach her higher self, particularly in moving toward self-actualization, which comes from an awareness of what needs to be planted or pruned from her life.
Much of her inspiration comes from her family adventures in the outdoors. She has written many articles about the connection she sees between themes in nature and leadership characteristics. For example, she recently completed her goal of walking every day for a year, so she took the opportunity to reflect on the role of discipline in the life of a leader.
REDEFINING EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATIONS FOR A NEW ERA
Looking toward the future of executive communications, Kristin believes leaders and communicators must be agile, looking both forward and backward, and be willing to shift approaches quickly as circumstances require.
She has been successful helping leaders to make leaps ahead by having a future-forward lens and the fortitude and courage to implement new approaches, even before having much proof of concept.
To guide her work, she focuses on leadership characteristics that have endured through the ages. She reads historical fiction that focuses on courage, overcoming adversity, and choosing humanity above all. She also learns from leaders of the past and present, particularly how they made tough decisions and fought for the right ideals to come to life. Kristin believes most great leaders were phenomenal communicators.
Her advice to leaders who want to communicate with more heart, courage, and clarity is straightforward. First, they must have the desire to change. Then, they should reflect on where growth opportunities exist in the work they do. If they are willing to commit to improving, she recommends working with a partner to begin integrating impactful approaches in leader communications.
A MESSAGE OF HOPE
Kristin believes one of the biggest misconceptions about leadership communications today is the belief that leaders should either be strong or soft. She says they should be both, as she has seen what happens when leaders are one and not the other. They might be strong but show no heart: they become impersonal, lack compassion, and grow disconnected from the people they lead. When leaders are all about heart without strength, they can’t stand on their convictions, make difficult decisions, or hold people accountable.
From Kristin’s experience working with leaders, she feels that impactful and compassionate leaders are people-first, kind, and empathetic. These leaders are principled, operate with integrity, and hold people to a high standard. They are service-oriented and results-focused, not transactional. Finally, they are on a journey to master how they communicate so that they inspire, not harm, generations of people. Who they are translates into work done that leaves a legacy that cannot be countered.
Kristin’s message to leaders worldwide is one of profound hope and possibility. “There is genius within you. Your contribution to the world as a leader will be exponentially greater when you work on growing as a human, and using that self-awareness and growth journey to influence the lives of others.”
She adds, “The work of your hands will be guided by the depths of your heart. Let us witness the best of you in the days ahead. Commit to putting in the work so that you leave other people and the planet a better place than when you found it. We are counting on you!”
