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Building for the Times, the Sequel: Expanding Our Crisis Practice
By Ian Christopher McCaleb, BHA Founder & Principal
Even More New Capabilities and New Arrivals
Last week’s launch announcement for our Open-Source Intelligence-based support and investigations sister company, Blue Highway Global (BHG), was met with the sort of attention, interest and enthusiasm that the architects of any new business venture pray for in the months and weeks that precede a carefully planned debut.
These things can be dicey, after all, and one always hopes for the best as a launch is initiated. We’ll have more to say about BHG very shortly. In the meantime, we are grateful indeed to everyone who has reached out to ask for more information, and to wish us well.
BHG was born of the times. And, as we explained last week, these times are beset with uncertainty, frustration, confusion and ever-moving goalposts. This calls for a renewed attention to our external communications capabilities, which, we proudly feel, have already proven their worth in Blue Highway Advisory’s young life.
Nonetheless, 2025 doesn’t look much like 2022, the year of our birth. And so, we’ve brought the best help available into the parent company, Blue Highway Advisory (BHA).
Maria Stagliano comes to BHA to steer our Crisis Practice into the murky but opportunity-laden future.
Maria is one of the Washington, DC-area’s most visible, rising Crisis Communications and Public Relations strategists. She brings an unmatched wealth and depth of experience to BHA in the complex fields of immediate crisis communications, long-term PR, risk analysis and reputation management.
And she gets what has to be done for clients now.
“I’m passionate about understanding each client’s individual challenges, intentions, and complications that don’t make it into the news,” Stagliano says. “Seeing the big picture and empathizing with a brand or an individual’s unique struggles allows crisis communicators to generate a stronger, more genuine narrative that better serves clients. Only then can you really understand the issue they are fighting and see the best path forward to solve them.”
Maria has brought her tireless work ethic and forward-thinking strategic sense to sectors and engagements as varied as cybersecurity and data breaches; financial institutions; DoJ investigations; food safety and food recalls; tribal disputes; environmental advocacy; racial issues; #MeToo matters; regulatory regimes; natural disasters; high-profile litigation; high-profile and high-net-worth individuals; presidential pardons; churches and religious organizations; education and school safety; healthcare and hospitals; pharmaceuticals; publishing; policing; manufacturing, the legal sector and immigration.
“I’m a firm believer in focusing on the ‘gray area’ of crisis,” Maria explains. “The media, which itself is struggling to understand its role in this new atmosphere, often paints issues as black and white — creating ‘controversy for eyeballs,’ or oversimplifying complex issues for audiences that don’t have to time to dig deeply on their own.”
She continues, “But when we as the communications consultants take time to peek behind the curtain into the nuances of our client’s crisis matter, we begin to understand all the complex factors converging to create the problem at-hand. And with understanding comes a path to solution and recovery.”
As a crisis communications and sought-after media relations expert, Maria has served as the first-line spokesperson for a variety of clients including food and medical safety companies, cryptocurrency litigation, organizations victimized by ransomware attacks, the Miami Condo Collapse and the Cayuga Nation of New York.
“The most successful clients I’ve worked with were ones who understood that crisis communications is part art, part science, part instinct. It requires a team who looks at each individual issue as a unique problem to solve – not something you can find thumbing through a massive pre-developed playbook,” she says.
“Too many people still see crisis PR teams as ‘fixers’ – wielders of magic, silver bullet solutions that make problems disappear in a puff of pre-determined colored smoke. Crisis communication and response strategies are never straightforward. Successfully navigating a crisis is about owning the narrative uniquely and definitively and finding a way to turn a negative moment into future-forward opportunities.”
“Rumors spread instantaneously as truths, and a good crisis PR team must react even faster. This requires early detection of issues, a strong understanding of looming reputational risks and the ability to react quickly to emerging threats. Being first to share your story is key to controlling controversial narratives about a person or brand, but to successfully pull that off, you need to already have a relationship with your crisis team.”
Maria graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.A. in Public Relations, a minor in theater design and a certificate in Public Affairs Communications.
She lives in Arlington, VA, and has an Internet-famous toucan named Chester, who you can visit here:
https://www.chesterthetoucan.com or follow on social media as @Chester_the_Toucan
(You really should visit Chester online – talk about a much-needed wellspring of wonder and joy… Go. Now. My two cents…) -- Ian
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