Mission

I've spent 20 years working on stories in the public debate in different ways. Now I am helping progressive champions tell the story of their campaign, their issue, their brand, or their candidacy.

I want to help you do two things: change the narrative, and create a narrative for change. 

With a strategic communications plan and a powerful message, you can shift the frame of a public debate so that the argument is on your terms, not theirs. By telling compelling stories, we can empower the work of fierce advocates, passionate organizers, and brilliant social entrepreneurs to make real change in the world.  This can work whether you're a multimillion-dollar foundation, or a group of volunteer community organizers. I've worked with both and everyone in between. 

Let's make some noise. 

About Jonathan

Jonathan Lipman is a 25-year veteran of communications in public life. 

He started his career as a newspaper journalist at the dawn of the Internet age, doing old-fashioned neighborhood reporting in the Chicago suburbs for the Daily Southtown. Known for incisive, change-making investigative pieces, he rose to be the paper's Chicago City Hall correspondent and its top investigative reporter, earning several awards. 

As the newspaper industry began a downturn, Jonathan turned to politics, serving as the communications director for U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL-08) and then for U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in Washington. He helped guide their public message during the debates around Obamacare, the financial crisis of 2008, and Planned Parenthood funding. After five years on the Hill, he shifted to consulting. Working as a Vice President at BerlinRosen, he drove message and press relations for a range of major national clients, including the Knight Foundation, American Jewish World Service, and Boston Community Capital. 

It was during this time that Jonathan also took up his own community organizing, working alongside his wife as one of the co-chairs of the Philadelphia chapter of 350.org. Together, they organized nearly 1,000 people to travel to New York on a fleet of 19 buses for the 2014 People's Climate March. 

Before launching narrative/change, Jonathan helped lead the Jewish progressive community's response to these historic political times as the Chief Strategy Officer at Bend the Arc Jewish Action, where he oversaw all public-facing campaign work. It was there that Jonathan led the creation of the "We've Seen This Before" campaign against the candidacy of Donald Trump, named the Most Valuable Activist Campaign of 2016 by The Nation magazine. In the year after the Presidential election, he oversaw an unprecedented expansion in the organization's reach and strength. In 2018, he led the strategy, message and execution of the #LetMyPeopleStay civil disobedience action in the midst of the heated debate on immigration and the Dream Act.

Jonathan lives in South Philly with his wife, two children, and dogs Luke and Chewy.