For over two decades, I’ve worked at the intersection of corporate reputation, strategic communication, and organizational intelligence — advising global leaders and building frameworks that protect what matters most.
Craig E. Carroll, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Observatory on Corporate Reputation (OCR), a research and advisory network serving senior corporate affairs leaders at Fortune 500 and large multinational companies.
Through OCR, he convenes two annual gatherings — the Senior Corporate Affairs Summit and the Senior Corporate Affairs Policy Summit — and operates two peer networks: the Senior Corporate Affairs Network (SCAN) and the Global Corporate Affairs Network (GCAN). Members and participants include leaders from organizations such as BlackRock, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Kroger, MetLife, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Walmart.
His current work centers on Narrative Shield, an AI-powered platform that helps organizations detect contradictions, align messaging across teams, and protect institutional memory before communications reach the public. Narrative Shield integrates with Slack and Teams to flag conflicts in real time — functioning as a narrative alignment engine for corporate affairs, legal, compliance, and marketing teams.
He also advances the expanding mandate of the Chief Communications Officer — what he calls the CCO+ — and how corporate affairs leaders can govern reputation, narrative, and stakeholder trust at enterprise scale. Through OCR, he publishes The Corporate Brief, a strategic intelligence service that translates emerging risks into structured briefings for communications executives.
Craig is a lecturer at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, where he teaches corporate reputation and business-media relations. He has held faculty positions at NYU, the University of Southern California, Singapore Management University, IE Madrid, and Copenhagen Business School. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
He co-hosts Communication Breakdown, a podcast on corporate communications with Steve Dowling, former Head of Communications at Apple and OpenAI.
Craig has developed several proprietary frameworks used by corporate affairs leaders:
Craig teaches at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Courses include Business and the News Media, Corporate Reputation Building, and Corporate Social Responsibility.
His research focuses on corporate reputation measurement and development, the CCO+ role and corporate affairs leadership, narrative governance, and stakeholder trust.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation
Sage Publications, 2016
Corporate Reputation and the News Media
Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
Communication and Corporate Reputation and the News Media
Routledge, 2010
The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation
Wiley, forthcoming
Co-edited with Nell Horowitz
© 2026 Craig E. Carroll, Ph.D. All rights reserved.