Leadership in communications rarely announces itself. When it works, it is almost invisible, measured not in headlines but in trust, not in applause but in alignment. Over more than three decades, Mark Dollins has built his career in precisely those quiet spaces where clarity must exist before confidence can. From live newsrooms to Fortune 50 boardrooms to global transformation programs, his work has always centered on one insight: change only succeeds when people are prepared to believe in it.
Today, as Founder and President of North Star Communications Consulting, Dollins advises organizations through some of their most complex moments of transformation. From industrial mega-mergers to global infrastructure change, his influence is evident not in spectacle but in stability, the kind that allows institutions to move forward when uncertainty is highest.
Early Days
Before Mark Dollins ever stepped into boardrooms or led complex multinational change programs, he mastered the art of storytelling in one of the toughest schools imaginable: the newsroom. He started out as a general assignment print reporter in Northern Indiana, eventually moving into broadcast journalism with ABC News in Washington, DC.
The pace was relentless. Deadlines were immediate, and there was no room for error. Every story demanded sharp judgment, quick comprehension, and the ability to turn complex realities into clear, trustworthy narratives. In those formative years, Mark Dollins observed how people behave under pressure—how fear, urgency, and uncertainty influence decisions. These lessons would later shape his deep understanding of organizational change.
Journalism also instilled in him the discipline of asking the right questions—not just “what happened,” but “why does it matter, to whom, and with what consequences?” This early training in understanding stakeholders and their perspectives became a foundation for the work he would eventually do in management and leadership, long before such concepts were formalized in business language.
From Crisis to Corporate Influence
Dollins’ move from journalism into corporate communications took him into two industries where the stakes were exceptionally high: energy and consumer packaged goods. In the gas and electricity sector, he worked in an environment where crisis communication was not hypothetical. Issues of public safety, regulation, and community trust were immediate and deeply consequential.
He later joined Quaker Oats and PepsiCo, where he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer. There, his responsibilities expanded across brand and reputation management, financial communications, executive leadership visibility, and large-scale employee engagement.
Across these roles, one pattern became clear. Communication was never merely a support function. It directly shaped operational performance, investor confidence, and cultural alignment. Over time, internal and employee communications emerged as Dollins’ strongest discipline. He saw repeatedly that when people are uninformed or disengaged, strategy stalls. When they are prepared and aligned, even the most complex change becomes executable.
Founding North Star
After more than 30 years in executive leadership roles at Fortune 50 and Fortune 100 companies, Mark Dollins reached a professional inflection point. He had spent his career helping leaders communicate change. What he wanted now was to focus his entire professional energy on guiding organizations through transformation from the inside out.
North Star Communications Consulting was founded with that purpose. From the beginning, it was never intended to be a broad, generalist agency. Instead, it was designed to go deep at the precise intersection where communication, employee engagement, and change management converge.
The early consulting years were not effortless. Defining the firm’s true center of gravity took time. Dollins explored several advisory paths before fully identifying where his passion and the market’s greatest need aligned. Within the first two years, two tightly connected focus areas crystallized: change communications for employee engagement, and talent development within the communications and marketing professions.
A Turning Point at Historic Scale
Every leadership journey has a moment that permanently resets one’s understanding of scale and responsibility. For Mark Dollins, that defining chapter unfolded during the merger of DuPont and Dow, a $130 billion transaction that became the largest industrial merger in history.
Dollins led executive and employee communications throughout the merger and the subsequent plan to divide the combined organization into three separate companies. Over multiple years, tens of thousands of employees navigated continuous uncertainty: leadership changes, shifting corporate identities, evolving reporting lines, and new strategic priorities.
Traditional communication methods collapsed under the weight of that complexity. Messages could no longer be broadcast uniformly. They had to be deeply segmented and personalized for executives, managers, frontline workers, manufacturing employees, and specialized functions. Even communication needed to be synchronized with a formal change management discipline.
Legacy processes were dismantled. New tools were introduced. Entire engagement models were rethought from the ground up. The work forced a shift away from simply distributing information toward actively preparing people for behavioral and operational change.
The North Star Model: Where Story, Strategy, and Change Converge
What differentiates North Star from traditional consulting models is its deliberate integration of three disciplines that are often treated separately: the art of storytelling, the science of communication strategy tied to business outcomes, and the operational discipline of change management.
Narratives at North Star are built to generate belief and meaning. Strategy is never measured by activity alone but by the performance outcomes it enables. Change management, supported by Prosci certification, is used as the structural engine through which people move from awareness to adoption.
With more than four decades of collective experience across employee engagement, communications leadership, and change management, North Star brings a rare combination of creative insight and operational rigor.
A Terminal Transformation: Pittsburgh International Airport
In November 2025, Pittsburgh International Airport opened its new $1.7 billion terminal, an infrastructure investment that reshaped the physical footprint of the airport and its operational future as a regional economic engine.
More than 6,000 employees were affected by the transformation. New security protocols, updated ID badging systems, redesigned gate structures, new baggage handling technologies, and reconfigured parking and passenger flows touched nearly every operational role.
North Star led the multi-year change management communications for the project. The first priority was engagement and readiness. The team developed a master narrative and a detailed journey map that clarified what the transformation meant for every stakeholder group and when each phase of change would occur.
A dedicated internal campaign—“Get Ready PIT!”—combined face-to-face briefings, printed and digital newsletters, quick-reference “cheat sheets,” and interactive readiness contests that measured comprehension and belief. Communication was sequenced to ensure that every operational change reached the right people at the right moment.
The result was more than a successful opening day. Employees reported strong confidence in their readiness to operate within the new environment, and the transition unfolded with sustained operational alignment across multiple phases of change.
Thought Leadership as a Professional Responsibility
Beyond client consulting, Mark Dollins has consistently invested in advancing the broader profession. He serves as an adjunct professor of communications at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His book, Engaging Employees through Strategic Communication, published in 2021, is used today as a teaching resource at universities around the world. A second edition is now in final production with Routledge/Taylor & Francis and will be released in March 2026.
His perspectives on communications, employee engagement, and artificial intelligence have been featured through Forbes, PRSA Strategies and Tactics, Harvard-affiliated platforms, Poppulo global webcasts, and the UK Institute of Internal Communication.
Since 2023, North Star has conducted proprietary annual research on artificial intelligence and communications in partnership with the University of Missouri. The 2023, 2024, and 2025 surveys and white papers examine how communicators adopt AI across three applied dimensions: productivity, strategy, and leadership. Dollins also serves on the Communications Leadership Council at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and on the Forbes Communications Council.
North Star by the Numbers
Since its founding in 2011, North Star Communications Consulting has grown steadily and intentionally:
- More than 500% growth in top-line revenue since inception
- Approximately 200% revenue growth over the past three years
- 80% average year-over-year client retention
- Direct involvement in change communications for mergers and acquisitions totaling over $285 billion in combined value over the last five years
- Global client portfolio including RTX Technologies (Washington, DC), United Nations World Food Programme (Rome), Signet Jewelers (Akron), Responsible Jewellery Council (London), Visa APCEMEA (Singapore), and Toyota North America (Plano)
- More than 11,000 professional followers on LinkedIn
Partnerships That Extend Influence
Strategic collaboration has become central to North Star’s thought-leadership ecosystem. Its long-standing partnership with the University of Missouri on AI research has produced one of the most consistent global snapshots of how communicators are adapting to artificial intelligence.
Annual white papers now map AI’s practical applications across productivity, strategy, and leadership, positioning artificial intelligence not merely as a toolset but as a systemic force of professional change.
Participation with additional universities and thought-leadership councils continues to generate new frameworks, tools, and programming focused on communication excellence, change competence, and responsible AI governance.
Ethics, Privacy, and Trust
For Mark Dollins, ethics are not theoretical commitments. Data privacy, transparency, and responsible conduct are embedded into every engagement. These values are explicitly stated, personally reviewed with all team members, and reinforced as daily standards of behavior.
Client protection is treated as a core professional obligation rather than a compliance exercise. Ethical practice governs how information is handled, how decisions are made under pressure, and how stakeholder trust is preserved when uncertainty is at its highest.
What the Next Five Years Will Demand
Looking ahead, Mark Dollins sees two forces reshaping the profession more than any others: artificial intelligence and the accelerating pace of organizational change itself.
AI will continue to redefine how communicators work. But its success will depend less on tools than on acceptance, transparency, and ethical integration. Without structured change management, even the most advanced systems will fail to deliver sustained value. Distrust around AI remains real, and communicators will increasingly be responsible for explaining not just how AI is used, but why, where, and under what safeguards.
At the same time, transformation has become the permanent condition of modern organizations. Cultural shifts, digital reinvention, automation, and AI adoption will dominate internal communications agendas for decades. Communicators without formal change management expertise, Mark Dollins believes, will quickly lose strategic relevance.
Recognition and Industry Standing
Dollins’ work and leadership have been featured across multiple respected business and professional platforms. He has been recognized by Fortune’s Time and The Chief Navigators as one of the most admired leaders to follow. He has also been listed among the world’s top voices in internal communication by Zoom’s Workvivo community, an acknowledgment that spans established and emerging global influencers. Additional media features and recognitions continue to document the firm’s influence across the communications and change management landscape.
Balance, Perspective, and the Long View
Dollins views work-life balance through a simple metaphor: life as a pie. Career, relationships, family, self, and personal passions all occupy space within the same finite circle of time. When any one piece grows unchecked, the entire structure becomes unstable. Balance is not perfection. It is an intentional adjustment.
The most enduring lesson of his career has been equally clear. Growth accelerates when leaders surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are and different in perspective. Mentorship, curiosity, and shared learning sustain individuals and organizations over time.
Growth with Purpose
As North Star Communications Consulting continues to expand its global footprint, growth remains anchored in purpose rather than scale for its own sake. Mark Dollins remains focused on helping organizations navigate transformation with discipline, respect, and clarity.
From the urgency of live news reporting to the scale of international change programs, his career has followed a steady compass. It has always pointed toward a single principle: change succeeds when people are not treated as an audience, but as participants.
An Open Letter to the Next Generation
For those entering the profession, Dollins’ advice is grounded not in trend analysis but in lived experience.
First, he urges young communicators to go deeper into the craft of storytelling. Data, systems, and automation matter, but real engagement still happens at the level of the human heart. Technology should amplify, not replace, creative and emotional intelligence.
Second, he emphasizes a relentless focus on outcomes over outputs. The real value of communication lies in the business results it enables, not in volume of activity.
Third, he stresses the necessity of mastering change management as a formal discipline. Communication plans must be structurally linked to how people actually adopt new behaviors. One cannot function without the other.
Curiosity, he believes, remains the most durable professional asset. Every meaningful question opens a path to a new idea that matters.
Quick Takes
- One productivity tool he recommends: Canva for visual communication and Asana for remote project management.
- A quote that motivates him: A body and mind in motion stays in motion.
- One piece of advice for new entrepreneurs: Be, and stay, curious. Every answer to your question is a step toward a future idea that matters.
- A book every leader should read: Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.
Mark Dollins’s 5 Impactful Business Mantras
- Believe in Change: Transformation succeeds only when people are engaged and trust the process.
- Clarity First: Clear communication builds confidence and alignment.
- Storytelling Matters: How you share a message shapes understanding and action.
- Integrate Strategy and Action: Communication, change management, and business goals must work together.
- Lead with Trust: Ethics, transparency, and accountability are essential for lasting impact.
