Program Communications as Leadership Infrastructure
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Headquartered in Chicago’s West Side, UCAN is one of the city’s oldest and most innovative youth services organizations. For more than 150 years, UCAN has supported youth and families through a continuum of trauma-informed services spanning behavioral health, foster care, youth development, workforce pathways, and violence intervention and prevention.
As an integrated organization operating in complex, high-stakes environments, UCAN’s communications must do more than inform. They must reinforce trust, align leadership and staff, and support programs as they evolve in real time.
UCAN maintains strong internal leadership responsible for defining narrative, strategy, and priorities. causeFX partnered with UCAN as embedded, senior-level execution support, helping translate leadership direction into clear, consistent communications across initiatives, moments, and audiences.
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This was not a traditional agency engagement.
UCAN led narrative, strategy, and decision-making. causeFX operated inside that direction, providing trusted execution capacity where speed, coordination, and precision were required. The relationship was designed to strengthen UCAN’s ability to execute without introducing new layers of interpretation or ownership.
Across the partnership, causeFX worked alongside UCAN’s communications leadership to support executive-level communications, program launches, public-facing initiatives, and ongoing execution across the organization’s continuum of services.
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Each of the following outcomes focuses on a specific dimension of the partnership, while together they illustrate how communications served as leadership infrastructure.
The Network: Capacity building through shared structure and clarity
A system-level initiative that required clear positioning, accessible communication, and coordination across many stakeholders.Executive-Level Communications Execution and Leadership Coordination: Supporting leadership communications with speed, clarity, and consistency
Senior execution support embedded within UCAN’s communications leadership to translate strategy into usable materials and moments.UCAN Live: Branding and digital launch under pressure
Time-bound branding and digital execution for a public-facing violence intervention platform, coordinated across teams and partners.Program Launches and Embedded Communications Support: Always-on execution across programs and initiatives
Ongoing support across launches, updates, and rapid-response needs that kept communications aligned as work evolved
Each case study can be explored individually, while remaining connected to the broader partnership story.
For organizations delivering trauma-informed services, communications are inseparable from leadership, trust, and accountability.
Clarity matters internally before it can matter externally. Execution matters as much as intent.
This partnership demonstrates how communications can function as infrastructure when leadership retains narrative ownership and execution support is embedded at a senior level.
For UCAN, this meant communications could keep pace with the work itself without losing coherence, credibility, or care.
