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Editing and consulting for your internal communications
Partner with our team to send A+ Smart Brevity updates that drive engagement and become your staff and stakeholders' go-to source of critical information.
What you love from Axios
Axios launched in 2016 when no one in the world needed another news site. We were all overwhelmed with the endless onslaught of news and articles hitting our inboxes, apps, and text alerts every day.
Our founders realized something important: We didn't need more. We needed better. Smart information, thoughtfully presented, that explains what's new and why it matters. Smart Brevity is the style that emerged, based on reader habits and brain science. It took off like lightning.
Now in your internal comms
We took the lessons — and data — of Axios' best writers and applied it to internal communications. Since 2019, we've worked with teams at bp, Delta, and other leading organizations to help them send more engaging updates to staff and stakeholders. We built a practice around it to...
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Teach the foundational principles of Smart Brevity.
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Audit and assess a highly visible internal update — like an all-staff newsletter, manager update, or other recurring communication.
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Consult on the curation, presentation, and organization of its content.
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Edit every edition to be gold-star Smart Brevity.
Smart Brevity editing support for
your newsletters
Our editing partnerships are bespoke, but most run 6–9 months and focus on one recurring staff or stakeholder update. Our strongest partners extend that time — so we can move from communication to communication to set each one up for success.
Launch a newsletter
Custom pricing per communication
What's included
- Smart Brevity editing training
- Newsletter strategy training
- Feedback on content mix and send cadence
- Feedback on voice, tone, and imagery
- Hands-on edits for every edition
- Audience insights and survey advice
- Weekly checkins with your account manager
Improve a newsletter
Custom pricing per communication
What's included
- Smart Brevity editing training
- Newsletter strategy training
- Feedback on content mix and send cadence
- Feedback on voice, tone, and imagery
- Hands-on edits for every edition
- Audience insights and survey advice
- Weekly checkins with your account manager
Our Smart Brevity experts
One worked at the CIA, editing the President's Daily Brief. One spent years translating technical documentation. Some have spent decades in a newsroom. All are the reasons customers trust — and often return to — Axios HQ when teams are ready to embrace Smart Brevity.
Tim
Smart Brevity Editing
Tim
Smart Brevity Editing
Tim is a Lead Editor at Axios HQ. As the first editor on the services team, he has helped define how organizations can apply Smart Brevity to their internal communications.
- He’s worked with Fortune 100 customers like bp to help key editors adopt Smart Brevity, and build expert-level confidence in executing it.
- He’s worked with leaders in nearly every industry, with deep specialization in finance and healthcare.
- Tim studies his customers’ communication goals and challenges, advising on editorially sound solutions, and moving at the pace that works for their organization.
Prior to Axios HQ, Tim was a reporter and editor specializing in biotechnology, publishing his work in both English and Russian.
1 fun thing: Tim is an accredited investor and has actively managed his own investment fund for over a decade.
Jacob
Smart Brevity Editing
Jacob
Smart Brevity Editing
Jacob is a Lead Editor who works with some of Axios HQ’s longest-standing customers — and he hasn’t met a piece of writing he couldn’t Smart Brevitize. Just ask Delta.
- As an editor, he helps teams launch and polish vital staff newsletters, from advising on audience engagement strategy to delivering hands-on edits for each edition.
- As a coach, he works hand-in-hand with writers to help hone their craft, master Smart Brevity, and navigate change-management.
- He’s helped some of the world’s biggest companies reimagine stale jargon, revise complex details into clear insights, and rethink how they engage their people.
Prior to Axios HQ, Jacob was a team lead at a global PR firm and a boutique copywriter for nonprofit organizations like Doctors Without Borders.
1 fun thing: One time Jacob biked across the U.S. — pedaling over 4,000 miles from the Oregon coast to his hometown, Virginia Beach, VA. It was awesome.
Emily
Smart Brevity Strategy
Emily
Smart Brevity Strategy
Emily is the Senior Director leading Axios HQ’s Services. She’s worked with hundreds of organizations to consult on their communication goals — and to develop, document, and share best practices across them.
- She advises on Smart Brevity and communications strategy, tactics, and execution to upskill teams, reinvigorate reader engagement, or create transformational change.
- One of HQ’s early hires, she developed the Smart Brevity training program and has coached, edited, and trained thousands of professionals.
- She’s scaled HQ’s Services team and works with internal and external stakeholders to evolve, productize, and offer new Smart Brevity programs.
Prior to Axios HQ, Emily was a reporter and editor at Forbes and led editorial strategy for a new mobile reading experience launched at Google I/O. Afterward, she led content strategy, comms, and brand at AngelList Talent.
1 fun thing: Emily once reported and co-wrote an article that helped re-open a decades-closed case in the state of Ohio.
Phil
Smart Brevity Training
Phil
Smart Brevity Training
Phil is an Editor and Trainer, teaching corporate leaders, communicators, and professionals at organizations of all sizes how to improve critical communications.
- He’s helped teams across industries, including major financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, reimagine how they inform stakeholders and engage staff.
- He has led engaging training for both new Smart Brevity adopters and those working to expand and operationalize it across their organization.
- His insightful sessions and real-time feedback help customers quickly understand the methodology so they can apply it, feel its benefits, and continue to improve their craft.
Prior to Axios HQ, he was a CIA analyst, writing and editing in a style not far from Smart Brevity. He also served as an editor for the President’s Daily Brief.
1 fun thing: Phil is an actor on the side. Most recently, he played Claudius in a production of Hamlet.
Reed
Smart Brevity Training
Reed
Smart Brevity Training
Reed is an Editor and Trainer at Axios HQ and has helped hundreds of customers — like Takeda and UPS — learn Smart Brevity through customized strategy and training sessions.
- He builds a deep understanding of customers’ communication goals, then works with them to advise on and develop programming that addresses it.
- He leads hands-on, tailored workshops that connect the dots between unique customer communications — like emails, articles and narrative pieces — and the principles of Smart Brevity to help folks pave a strategic path forward.
- His insightful sessions and real-time feedback help customers quickly understand and apply the methodology so they can start to feel its benefits.
Prior to Axios HQ, Reed was a Google content editor and a senior features writer at the New York Post.
1 fun thing: Reed is the author of Slugfest, a 2017 book about the rivalry between Marvel and DC Comics.
Maria
Smart Brevity Operations
Maria
Smart Brevity Operations
Maria is the team’s Managing Editor, running day-to-day operations and working with customers to deliver Smart Brevity programs that achieve their communications goals.
- She works with our editors and trainers to build a deep understanding of each customer’s needs, challenges, and long-term goals, informing our shared strategy and action plan.
- She collaborates with customers to develop practical and collaborative processes to execute those plans — developing resources or consulting on workflow challenges.
- She has a top-line view across all Services customers, too, keeping a pulse on evolving best practices, sharing sharp insights with our partner organizations, and ensuring our programs deliver the greatest value for customers’ investment.
Prior to Axios HQ, Maria’s career focused on video creation – from newscasts in largest markets, to sponsored content at the country’s biggest trade shows, to stock media for the masses.
1 fun thing: Maria loves to travel. Her favorite destination so far has been Glacier National Park.
Kate
Smart Brevity Editing
Kate
Smart Brevity Editing
Kate is a Senior Editor at Axios HQ who is passionate about helping professionals at all levels understand how Smart Brevity and AI can make writing and editing easier.
- Kate delivers hands-on edits and Smart Brevity guidance to enhance customers’ content production and editorial processes.
- She helps them reduce their volume of communication while boosting open rates through routine consultation on critical, recurring staff and stakeholder outreach.
Prior to Axios HQ, Kate was the head of content for a financial start-up and a director of content marketing in the higher education space where she led a team of writers, editors, and strategists.
1 fun thing: Her former colleagues dubbed her the “Grammar Hammer,” and she has the insignia on a real hammer in her toolbox.
