Showcasing Henry’s CEO Gillian Stein as a Trusted, Strategic Leader and Executive Mental Health Advocate
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CHALLENGE
Henry’s CEO Gillian Stein asked Broad Reach to drive visibility for the Henry’s Foundation and her family’s commitment to mental health. Gillian wanted us to develop a communications strategy to enable a strong, trusted leadership voice, helping her become an advocate for executives with mental health conditions by demonstrating that leaders with bipolar can be successful. She also wanted help framing her company’s recent restructuring, demonstrating its strategic value in positioning Henry’s for future growth.

SOLUTION
We started by conducting an audit of Gillian’s LinkedIn profile. We revised it strategically to highlight her biggest achievements and successes that led to her appointment as CEO, and to showcase her successes in the role itself. We then developed a communications strategy to meet her goals and objectives, and wrote three LinkedIn articles that showcased 1) her strategy to lead the company through a restructuring during the pandemic and how this positioned the iconic retailer for success, 2) how she navigates the responsibility of being the fourth generation to run the family business, and 3) the fact that she has bipolar disorder and is the first Canadian CEO to have the courage to share such a diagnosis publicly. We then launched a PR campaign to coincide with her announcement of her bipolar disorder.

IMPACT
Gillian’s LinkedIn profile tells the story of her training and path to becoming CEO. Her LinkedIn articles generated unprecedented engagement with leaders and mental health professionals across the country and around the globe, and positioned her as the strategic, capable CEO that she is, regardless of her diagnosis. Our PR campaign generated a feature story in the Financial Post Magazine, featured in Postmedia outlets across the country; multiple CBC radio interviews, which were also featured across the country; podcast interviews including the Harvard Business Review’s The Anxious Achiever, Retailer Insider, Chatter that Matters, and the Dead Pixels Society; and bylined articles in the Ivey Business Journal and Canadian SME Business Magazine. In February 2022, Gillian was named one of 2022’s Top 25 Women of Influence for the impact she’s had in being “the first and only high profile Canadian CEO to announce a personal mental illness diagnosis.” Gillian has also been approached to speak to various public and private groups about being a CEO with bipolar disorder, for which we helped her develop her speech. In a few short months, our strategy and collaboration allowed Gillian to reach her goal of positioning herself, the Henry’s Foundation and her family as advocates and leaders in the mental health space.