In this Q&A, Kristen Garvey, senior vice president of global communications at Waters Corporation, a Boston-area life sciences company, shares her perspective with McKinsey’s Nicolle Kuritsky and Eric Sherman on what it truly means to communicate with intention—grounding stories in authenticity, elevating employee voices, and building trust through meaningful engagement.
Drawing on her experience at the intersection of leadership, culture, and storytelling, Kristen offers practical insights and thoughtful reflections that challenge communicators to move beyond messages and toward impact. The following is a lightly edited excerpt of their conversation.
McKinsey: Kristen, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Can we start off with a little background about you? How did you get to where you are?
Kristen Garvey, Waters: I’ve always been passionate about communications and the ability to connect people to purpose. At Waters, our team’s focus is on advancing the brand and strengthening employee engagement, and spans internal and external communications, brand, philanthropy, and social engagement.
Prior to this role, I led employee communications at Dell, where storytelling was a big focus, and I’ve seen a few cross-cutting themes and practices that have remained consistent over time: connecting people to purpose, leading with authenticity, and engaging many stakeholder groups.
McKinsey: We are seeing context collapse where leaders are increasingly tasked with communicating across multiple channels to various fragmented audiences. In your experience, how can communications leaders connect with those audiences that matter most?
Kristen Garvey: In today’s day and age, authenticity and empathy make the difference. People are getting so many messages every day. There is no external and internal—we are constantly thinking about how what people see on one channel dovetails with what they hear across other channels and platforms.
Building trust through consistent communications is critical, and meeting audiences where they are is essential. This means building narratives and stories that resonate on a human level. People are craving more human connection, and as communications professionals, we are constantly thinking about what message needs to go through what channel.
The stories we tell around purpose here at Waters connect to what matters most for sentients, researchers, clinicians and ultimately patients. This makes a huge difference when we think about sharing an authentic point of view.
McKinsey: In an era of constant information flow, misinformation, and eroding institutional trust, how do you think about the evolving role of communicators? And how do you build that communications muscle across the organization—especially in the context of this large-scale integration with BD?
Kristen Garvey: A communications leader is as much an executive strategic adviser as a strategic communicator.
In moments of high change and uncertainty, it’s important to remember that the small communications moments matter. For example, when leaders proactively acknowledge what information is and is not available, and confidently say, “This is what I know and what I don’t know,” it builds credibility and trust.
For employees, your most trusted relationship is with your manager, so it’s important for communications leaders to think about how they are equipping managers to ensure they are part of the engagement plan.
Something we’ve done at Waters, for example, is help managers understand context for decisions that are being made. As a publicly traded company, there are known milestones, such as earnings, that take place each quarter. While the primary audience for earnings is investors, we also know many employees listen. Each quarter, after our earnings call, we host a call with our people leaders across the organization to distill the results and share investor sentiment. This effort enables managers to better understand the context in which we are operating and the “why” behind certain decisions. Additionally, it helps build transparency, trust, and financial acumen across the company. Leading up to the close of the integration with BD, we held a series of sessions with leaders who directly reported to the executive committee, as well as people leaders, to set the right tone, put decisions into context, and reinforce our shared purpose.
In addition to financial acumen, we are focused on building storytelling acumen—the ability to convey a human-first story.
Often that story starts with our own—whether it’s finding a connection between our personal purpose and that of the company, or ensuring every member of our team understands how the work they do each day connects back to the company’s ambitions and goals. People leaders are the linchpin in bringing that to life. Supporting them in that journey pays dividends. That’s at the essence of leadership. You may not know all the answers, but you must still set the tone, role-model the desired behaviors, and set expectations to drive toward a shared goal.
McKinsey: Waters has just completed its merger with BD Biosciences and Diagnostic Solutions businesses. What are you focused on now, and how have you brought teams together post‒day one?
Kristen Garvey: Now the real fun begins! There was so much planning and deliberation leading up to day one, and we’re excited about how teams are coming together already. I’ll share with you two initiatives that are underway.
First, we’ve launched a Change Champions program across the organization, convening 100+ next-generation leaders who’ve been nominated by leadership to drive large-scale change. These are high-potential team members who’ve been selected based on their ability to unify peers, take on and execute strategic priority initiatives, and have the ability to mobilize teams to move further and faster toward a common goal. This program will feature dedicated trainings and engagement to upskill and reskill teams to effectively lead through change. This work not only supports the business but presents a new way to develop and strengthen our deep bench of talent.
Another initiative that is brand-new is called Coffee for a Cause. In essence, we are turning everyday conversations into meaningful impact by matching employees across countries, teams, and business functions for brief virtual “coffee chats.” We’re piloting this initially as a weeklong program offering a simple, informal way for colleagues to build relationships across the organization, while making a positive impact together. And we’re investing in these common causes: For every conversation that takes place, Waters will make a donation to PATH, supporting its mission to advance health equity.
Again, we have so much that unites us rather than divides us, and it’s critical that we build the forums to promote this idea. This work is anchored in what we call the 3Cs: competence, courage, and compassion. These values are reflected in how work gets done and become a reinforcing cycle that drives culture and ways of working.
McKinsey: Let’s change gears and discuss the topic on everyone’s mind these days: AI. What do you think AI means for the communications industry and communications professionals?
Kristen Garvey: AI is a huge opportunity. It’s a game changer. While it’s not a replacement for the work we do, how we do our work has changed. We are looking at how we can take repeatable processes and deploy AI to free us up for more strategic efforts, and we’re focused on ensuring we have the right governance to do this work safely, ethically, and responsibly.
McKinsey: How are you thinking about AI in your organization, and what excites you about the opportunity with AI?
Kristen Garvey: There’s opportunity with AI for us to get time back in our day for more strategic thinking. If we can alleviate firefighting mode with more efficiency and better forecasting, we’ll be better strategic partners.
A great example of this in our organization is our press release intake process. We’re building an agent to help the team crystallize and refine the value proposition of their announcements. This can help us both elevate and standardize the external announcement approach, while upskilling teams on what makes a truly distinctive announcement. For our team, it’s a much more efficient and effective system. As communicators, we also recognize that staring at a blank sheet of paper can be quite intimidating. AI can serve as a great thought partner to help develop initial drafts, refine copy, and facilitate the writing process. I always encourage my team to use AI as a companion and partner for writing and editing, and then overlay it with their judgment, context, and expertise.
There is no doubt that AI will continue to evolve and we will unearth new opportunities to deploy technology.
Ultimately, we remain very focused on our people, who can talk about our brand and tell our story. In this ecosystem, the employee voice becomes more and more important.
Rapid-fire with Kristen Garvey:
- One word that describes great communications today: Authenticity.
- Most overused corporate buzzword: Synergies.
- Favorite campaign or communications moment (yours or someone else’s):
- Someone else’s: P&G Olympics campaign with moms.
- Mine: People. The most rewarding part of my job and career is the opportunity to look at people I have worked with and where they are today.
- Communications trend you wish would come back: Hand-written notes.
- Go-to productivity ritual before a big moment: Ground myself in gratitude. I have a gratitude journal and jot down three things I’m grateful for before I start the workday.
- Book or podcast currently inspiring you: I read fiction and creative writing. Sara Goodman Confino’s Don't Forget to Write is a great story.
- The most underrated skill in communications: Brevity.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.