Derek Brown

Derek Brown

Philadelphia, PA (603) 496-5865 njderekbrown@gmail.com derekbrownportfolio.com

U.S. Citizen

Internal and Employee Communications | Channels and Leadership Communications | Change Communications

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Summary

Internal communications professional with more than 15 years in employee, corporate and leadership communications, including six years as a communications manager at KPMG. Plans, writes and publishes across the intranet, email, digital signage, town halls and manager cascades for a utility of about 3,000 employees, and writes the communication plans behind leadership transitions, HR programs and organizational change. Also builds AI tools in Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Gemini that help a communications team work faster.

Work Experience

Senior Communications Specialist

Exelon (PECO)

12/2024 - Present

  • Write and publish internal communications for PECO’s workforce of about 3,000 across the intranet, email, digital signage and supervisor cascades, publishing in SharePoint and HubSpot and covering leadership messages, organizational change and HR topics such as benefits, performance management and talent development.
  • Wrote and produced four quarterly all-hands town halls in 2025 for an employee audience of about 3,000, each built around one of the company’s strategic priorities, including the run of show, speaker briefings, leader remarks, live Q&A and video scripts; formats ranged from a virtual broadcast with watch parties to an in-person event for field employees, and one introduced PECO’s new CEO.
  • Wrote communication plans for a CEO transition and for employee resource groups, and a 2027 employee communications plan built on the idea that employees are customers first, with goals for manager communications, field reach and leadership transitions.
  • Draft leader remarks, talking points and personnel announcements, confirm details with subject-matter experts and stakeholders, and manage each through leadership review up to the vice president of communications and marketing.
  • Served as communications lead for Bring Your Child to Work Day 2026, an employee engagement event with an estimated 1,100 to 1,400 attendees; designed the post-event survey and wrote the findings and recommendations report from 171 responses.
  • Designed a message-testing method that runs a draft past 20 employee archetypes to predict questions and reactions before a message is sent; it has informed live send decisions.
  • Built nine Microsoft Copilot agents, each aimed at a recurring problem in communications work: turning source documents into employee toolkits with Q&A and supervisor talking points, finding approved wording in the team’s SharePoint library, drafting leader remarks timed to the speaking slot, and turning campaign data into plain-language performance reports. Each is versioned and designed to adapt to any Exelon operating company.
  • Colleagues’ use shaped the agents: the team’s newsletter owner ran the toolkit agent and her edits set the rules for its next version, and the reporting agent’s first run analyzed a campaign of about 200,000 emails per send, which its user presented at a regional meeting of three utilities.

Corporate Communications Writer

Creative Circle (contract; client: Ansell)

10/2023 - 12/2024

  • Led employee communications for the integration of Kimberly-Clark’s personal protective equipment business into Ansell, including change management communications, onboarding announcements for incoming employees and CEO messages to the combined global workforce, sequenced so both groups got accurate information at each stage.
  • Created and launched a companywide employee newsletter, and wrote, edited and published internal news stories.
  • Drafted CEO messages for the annual report, labor rights report and sustainability report.

Content Specialist

Creative Circle (contract; client: Edward Jones)

02/2023 - 10/2023

  • Built the content strategy and editorial calendar for an internal SharePoint site serving the firm’s Talent Operations Experience Center of Expertise, and created training materials to help employees adopt new business applications.

Communications and Marketing Consultant

Atrium (contract; client: EY, through EY GigNow)

05/2021 - 02/2023

  • Planned and ran the editorial calendar across multiple digital platforms; viewership grew about 30% year over year.

Content Strategist

Horse for a Day

10/2019 - 05/2021

  • Led content strategy, SEO and partnerships for a digital brand.

Communications Manager

KPMG

09/2013 - 10/2019

  • Managed content development for major digital transformation projects.
  • Wrote executive thought leadership published in Harvard Business Review and CIO.
  • Created content for KPMG’s strategic alliances with Microsoft, ServiceNow and Workday.

Content Strategy Leader

JCPR

07/2011 - 09/2013

  • Wrote executive communications for financial services firms; won a Bronze Telly Award for online video.

Volunteer Experience

Pro Bono Communications Consultant

Catchafire

04/2025 - Present

  • Completed six engagements with six nonprofits, including a messaging and fundraising playbook for the Hawaiʻi State Chapter of Children’s Justice Centers and an interactive donor dashboard for The Lamb Center built from an 11-year CRM export.

Skills

Internal communications
employee and leadership messages, intranet content, newsletters, town halls and all-hands meetings, talking points and Q&A, manager cascades, HR and organizational change communications, AP Style
Planning and delivery
communication plans, editorial calendars, multichannel campaigns, stakeholder and subject-matter expert review, request intake, managing multiple projects and deadlines
Measurement
survey design and analysis, email and campaign metrics, performance reporting, recommendations
Platforms
Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, Teams, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Outlook), HubSpot, Monday.com, Google Workspace, content management systems
AI tools
Microsoft Copilot custom agents, Claude, Google Gemini, generative video (Runway, Veo, HeyGen), instruction writing, guardrails against fabricated content

Education

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Communications
New York University

Certifications

Google UX Design Specialization, Coursera
Gemini Certified Educator, Google