Be Transparent, Even When It’s Uncomfortable.
During times of uncertainty, your team craves honesty more than false certainty. Transparency builds trust.
today’s world, uncertainty has become the new normal. Yet, some companies are not only surviving but thriving by leveraging disruption as an opportunity for growth and innovation. What strategies, mindsets, and practices enable businesses to navigate chaos and come out stronger on the other side? As part of this series, we are interviewing Christine Perkett, CEO & Co-founder of The Nova Method, an audience-first marketing communications, branding, and PR firm.
Christine Perkett is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Nova Method. Christine has built a career on creating new brands and reimagining how they communicate with their audience. As the founder of three companies before The Nova Method, Christine has earned accolades for her client work, and her business acumen and leadership in B2B and B2C. Forrester referred to her work as a “Golden Standard Image” in a report on her remote work culture and leadership.
Christine has led groundbreaking campaigns for clients across various industries, including technology, healthcare, finance, and nonprofits. She combines strategic insight with creative ingenuity to craft campaigns that connect and deliver. Christine is also an adjunct professor at Northeastern University, teaching social media and brand strategy for nearly 10 years.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
“Interesting” is a tough choice because there have been many interesting moments between successes and setbacks. Yet after decades as an entrepreneur, one story stands out: building a SaaS product for measuring PR and media analytics.
In 2013, my agency continued to encounter the same issue: we excelled at securing media coverage, but struggled to demonstrate our impact on the business. PR tools spat out vanity metrics — impressions, circulation, follower counts — but none of them answered the only question that really mattered: did this coverage resonate with the right audience and influence action?
We built our own system — at first, a Google Sheet with a proprietary measurement system — to demonstrate the actual business impact per article. What emerged was eye-opening: highly targeted niche stories in trade publications often outperformed glossy national mentions in terms of driving engagement and revenue. That experiment eventually became SeeDepth, a SaaS platform I bootstrapped into reality, offering real-time campaign scoring based on actual performance signals that CFOs cared about.
We secured national clients, kept churn under 5%, and proved that PR could — and should — be measured in business outcomes, not just headlines. Eventually, as the analytics space grew crowded and VC funding remained elusive, following the launch of a competitor just before us, I brought that IP back into the agency. Today, that same philosophy powers The Nova Method: real accountability, clear narratives, the right audiences, and financial impact.
The personal and professional lessons from that chapter were profound:
Solve the problem before the market calls it table stakes. And resilience will outrun runway every time.
What makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
What makes The Nova Method stand out is both our methodology and our story. My co-founder, Michelle, and I first worked together decades ago as young, scrappy PR executives sharing an office overlooking the famed Charles River in Boston. When I founded my first agency, she was my very first hire because I recognized her tenacity, creativity, and integrity.
Fast forward 20+ years: After building independent yet similar careers in agency ownership and higher education, we reunited in 2024. Despite years apart professionally, we discovered we had been navigating parallel personal and professional journeys. We had both evolved into strategic thinkers, modern operators, and audience-first communicators. Reuniting as partners felt both natural and powerful. We knew how to build an agency that would flip the traditional model on its head by combining an audience-first, inside-out approach to marketing communications, branding, and PR with a bold yet awakening statement to clients: “It’s not about you.” An agency with empowered executives — the ever-important ”humanity” piece — and AI-powered efficiencies to deliver faster, more measurable outcomes for our clients.
At the heart of The Nova Method is our proprietary Assimilate → Align → Activate framework. We begin by thoroughly understanding the internal and external landscape of a client’s brand. Then we align messaging to audience psychology, not just product features. Finally, we activate campaigns with a relentless focus on business outcomes, not vanity metrics. In a market flooded with noise, we’re in the business of clarity, connection, and conversion.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
1. Grit
Starting just one business takes courage. Starting four requires something deeper. I’ve chosen the uncertainty of entrepreneurship over the comfort of a steady corporate paycheck, repeatedly. That’s not a path for everyone. It means risking public failure, weathering income volatility, and riding out economic downturns. But the upside is unmatched: the ability to build, create, and drive real impact on your own terms. Grit fuels my appetite for calculated risk, continual reinvention, and building companies that endure.
2. Resilience
Throughout my career, my personal life has often thrown curveballs that could have easily derailed my professional path. My career has had its bumps as well, having navigated the dot-com crash and 9/11, the 2008 market collapse, the chaos and fear of COVID-19, and other disruptions. Yet, I’ve always believed that resilience is about movement. Even when forward momentum feels impossible, even on the hardest days, I show up for my teams and my clients. That’s why today I write I’ll Take It From Here, my LinkedIn newsletter on resilient leadership, and am writing a forthcoming book by the same name. Resilience isn’t a trait you’re born with; it’s a muscle you build. We all face hardships; it’s how we get up and continue that makes us or breaks us.
3. Network (and how you use it)
When I moved to Boston from a small Midwestern town, I knew one person. Today, my network spans industries, continents, and disciplines — from journalists to CEOs, from academics to investors. I don’t cultivate relationships transactionally. I aim to give before I ask, to amplify others’ work even when I gain nothing directly. And over the years, this approach has benefitted me in unexpected and invaluable ways.
How does your company nurture a culture that embraces change and innovation during periods of uncertainty?
Innovation has been integral to my leadership approach from the outset. In 1998, I launched my first company as a fully virtual agency, decades before COVID made remote work commonplace. At the time, many thought it was a crazy idea. Yet, our distributed model attracted top talent across geographies, delivered exceptional client results, and even earned recognition from Forrester Research for pioneering remote leadership and technology best practices. That same appetite for innovation carries into The Nova Method.
We foster a culture where curiosity is rewarded, where asking “why not?” is celebrated, and where all team members feel empowered to challenge assumptions. Too many leaders unintentionally crush innovation by making their teams afraid to share wild ideas. We actively encourage calculated risk-taking, unconventional thinking, and a safe space to explore untested approaches. Because if you want innovation, you have to model it yourself, and then back it up with trust and support.
We’ve weathered decades of changes across PR and marketing, and today face the AI revolution. Our core principle remains: adapt early, stay audience-first, and leverage change as a competitive advantage.
What are the key strategies your business has used to turn market disruptions into opportunities for growth?
The Nova Method’s entire foundation is built on navigating disruption by putting audience psychology at the center of everything we do. Our proprietary Assimilate → Align → Activate methodology allows us to:
- Assimilate audience behavior, motivations, and aspirations with business goals and drivers, going beyond typical demographic research to deep audience immersion.
- Align these audience insights with brand messaging that creates emotional resonance, not just transactional benefits, making brands a part of their audience’s daily lives.
- Activate campaigns that drive measurable business, revenue, and valuation outcomes, not just marketing noise.
When you focus on your audience’s shifting needs and what they want to hear, not just what you want to tell them, you stop guessing and start connecting and driving action.
Can you share an example of a major pivot your company made in response to unexpected challenges, and the lessons learned from that experience?
The Nova Method itself is a result of strategic reinvention. While it launched officially in 2025, its DNA is rooted in decades of learning how to turn headwinds into tailwinds. Take the 2008 market crash, for example: many agencies retrenched. Instead, I trusted my leadership intuition and leaned into offering services that directly tied marketing efforts to business results, not just press hits or surface-level metrics. We evolved from pure PR services to marketing and sales enablement. That approach laid the foundation for The Nova Method’s integrated service offering.
The biggest lesson? Your clients, employees, and markets are always evolving. Trust your gut, adapt boldly, but always anchor your decisions to what delivers true value, not trends.
How do you identify and act on emerging trends that could impact your industry before your competitors do?
Two things:
1. The power of my network. I’m fortunate to be connected to world-class journalists, CEOs, technologists, investors, and innovators who constantly expand my thinking. I listen closely to the conversations happening across industries — often well before trends hit the mainstream.
2. Intentional observation before action. When social media emerged in the early 2000s, we didn’t dive in blindly. We watched, listened, studied behaviors, and then designed intentional strategies for clients. I was in a book in 2008 about the value of Twitter’s (now X) use for businesses, long before many companies even had accounts. The same applies today with AI, data privacy, and shifting audience behaviors. I believe in taking risks, but smart, calculated risks, rooted in research and guided by pattern recognition.
What are your “Five Things That Leaders Can Do To Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity”?
- Listen Deeper, Speak Less.
Uncertainty breeds noise. Leaders who listen — really listen — spot emerging patterns before others do. - Protect Your Core Values, But Flex Your Models.
Adapt your approach without sacrificing your principles. That’s how you pivot without losing your identity. - Be Transparent, Even When It’s Uncomfortable.
During times of uncertainty, your team craves honesty more than false certainty. Transparency builds trust. - Experiment Relentlessly.
Small tests allow you to learn fast and fail safely. Innovation happens incrementally before it becomes exponential. - Invest in People.
In times of chaos, talent is your competitive advantage. Empower your team to contribute, take risks, and own the outcome.
What role does resilience play in your leadership approach, and how do you instill that resilience in your team?
Resilience is the heartbeat of leadership. I model it by showing up — even on the hardest days — with honesty, creativity, and forward momentum. I acknowledge that setbacks happen, but progress comes from how we respond. At our company, we cultivate a culture of psychological safety, prioritize learning over perfection, and promote open and transparent dialogue. That’s how resilience becomes contagious.
How do you balance long-term strategic planning with the need for rapid adaptability in an unpredictable environment?
I operate with what I call “anchored agility.” We have a clear long-term vision and principles, but we remain nimble in how we execute them. Our strategy is built to flex, because the world doesn’t care about your perfect 5-year plan. But as long as you know why you exist and who you serve, you can adapt your how without losing direction.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would ignite a global conversation around Resilient Leadership — helping people reframe failure, normalize struggle, and build emotional strength as a competitive advantage in business and in life. Far too often, we celebrate only the highlight reels. My mission is to help leaders and individuals embrace the messy, imperfect, beautiful work of building resilience — because that’s where real growth happens.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can find me on LinkedIn, where I share insights on marketing, branding, and PR, explore resilient leadership, celebrate growth after adversity, and write about how to lead through uncertainty. You can also visit TheNovaMethod.com for more on our audience-first approach to marketing, branding, and PR.
About the Author: Christine Perkett
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