Experience at the intersection of institutions, creators, trust, and public impact.
Narrative Architecture brings together two forms of expertise rarely found in the same firm: deep institutional experience across journalism, public health, media, and digital platforms, and direct lived-experience and creator-native credibility in mental health communication.
We have helped build creator strategy inside major public health, media, technology, and storytelling ecosystems — including work connected to Harvard Chan, The New York Times, Headspace, Upworthy, The Dogist, and large-scale creator and audience programs.
Our work is rooted in a simple premise: the people closest to the issue, the communities already in conversation, and the trusted messengers they listen to should help shape the strategy before research, tools, campaigns, or public-facing programs go live.
Our Team
Amy O’Leary
FounderAmy O’Leary is an award-winning journalist, executive, and digital strategist who helps institutions adapt to shifts in technology, audience behavior, and public trust. She has held leadership roles at The New York Times, Upworthy, and Headspace, and was part of the team behind the New York Times Innovation Report.
Her work sits at the intersection of editorial judgment, audience strategy, organizational change, and digital systems. Across journalism, media, and mental health, she has helped teams translate complex ideas into public-facing experiences that are clearer, more credible, and more responsive to how people actually seek, consume, question, and trust information.
Amy brings deep experience helping major institutions understand not only what they need to say, but how their work will be encountered by real audiences. She is especially skilled at identifying the gap between internal expertise and public understanding — then building the strategy, language, systems, and editorial infrastructure needed to close it.
At Narrative Architecture, Amy helps organizations shape ideas, products, programs, and messages before they go public. Her work brings together institutional fluency, audience insight, digital strategy, and a rigorous understanding of trust — helping teams build public-facing work that is more useful, legible, and likely to resonate with the people it is meant to reach.
FounderKate Speer
Kate Speer is a mental health creator, strategist, patient advocate, and lived-experience leader whose work focuses on public trust, mental health communication, creator ecosystems, and lived-experience strategy.
She helped architect creator strategy for the Harvard Chan Center for Health Communication’s groundbreaking creator program and previously served as CEO of The Dogist, a multi-million-dollar media platform she scaled to a global audience of 11 million.
Her work combines institutional strategy with firsthand experience navigating mental health systems, building public-facing creator communities, and translating complex health and social issues into language people can actually understand and trust.
Kate’s work has included creator recruitment, trusted-messenger strategy, lived-experience engagement, research dissemination, public health communication, and narrative strategy for institutions seeking to reach communities with care and credibility.
Public work history
Narrative Architecture is built from years of work across:
Public health and health communication
Including creator strategy and trusted-messenger work connected to Harvard Chan’s Center for Health Communication.
Mental health and lived-experience storytelling
Including public-facing mental health advocacy, patient advocacy, and creator-led communication rooted in lived experience.
Digital media and audience strategy
Including leadership and strategy work across large-scale media, journalism, creator, and platform environments.
Ethical technology and digital health
Including evaluation of how products, AI systems, health tools, and public-facing experiences resonate with real users before launch.
Creator and community ecosystems
Including creator cohort design, recruitment strategy, briefing systems, compensation frameworks, and research dissemination.
