Ghost Writing: Thought Leadership

At ICF and ICF Next (now Phaedon), I was the resident storyteller. Everyone there is brilliant, but not everyone can put their knowledge and thoughts to paper in an engaging way. I was there to take what other people knew and turn it into a story that taught people.

My work at ICF Next primarily consisted of ghost writing thought leadership articles on a wide variety of topics in a wide variety of voices, ranging from more casual conversations about retail, Gen Z, app design, and travel and hospitality, to highly technical pieces on strategic marketing and advertising, Web 3.0, loyalty programs, personalization, and CPGs. At ICF, I wrote about digital modernization in the federal space and at the enterprise level, emerging technology, social programs, and public health, among other topics. For these articles I interviewed internal subject matter experts and used our dialogue to build an article that stayed true to each person’s individual voice and knowledge level, sometimes interpreting jargon or highly technical topics into more approachable and understandable language, becoming the go-to writer for all AI content.

I also used original research to create content like smart charts, highlighting a single data point and illustrating the bigger story behind it, and wrote pieces about our client work.

Some of the articles I ghost wrote and edited include:

• Navigating the Medicare Advantage customer landscape

• How agencies can create secure Gen AI testing environments

• Accelerating genetic literacy using AI and genetics expertise

• How to get your agency data ready for AI

• Reducing malaria in Cameroon by improving monitoring and evaluation systems

• Opioid overdoses are rising—is there a solution?

• Digital modernization requires data—but a huge portion isn’t being used

  Note: The following articles are no longer hyperlinked because the URLs were lost when ICF Next became a separate entity. Some of them can be found on their new website, wearephaedon.com

• Using a data-driven media strategy to elevate your brand

• How to prove – and improve – your ROI in media

• Leveraging technology to take your in-store experiences to the next level

• Connecting restaurants to their customers in the digital age

• Engaging Gen Z through authentic messaging

• Elevating loyalty through gamification

• Designing your app with experience in mind

• Creating a foundation of trust to deliver personalized experiences

• Personalizing experiences at the intersection of UX and loyalty

• To achieve emotional loyalty, keep people at the core

• Harnessing the power of predictive modeling to deliver personalized experiences at scale

But the one I’m most proud of is this article about the concepts of everyday AI versus transformation AI—in this case, all I had to go on was the phrase “transformational AI” and very little context to create an article in the voice and expertise of our CTO defining both types of AI, describing how they are used, and recommending them to federal agencies. Gratifyingly, my draft came back from him with very few, very minor edits and was published just two weeks after the initial concepting.