Meet Lara

🌙 Founder & Principal: Lara Steele, PhD 🌙

Communications strategist, organizational anthropologist, and human architecture nerd.

I am a senior communications and change leader who works with people leaders and executives at moments when clarity matters most.

Before founding Arcana Communications, I spent 11 years inside pharma and biotech — at Biogen, BlueRock Therapeutics, and Pfizer — and years before that in nonprofit and academia. In every environment, communications functioned as infrastructure: holding people together, translating complexity, and supporting sound judgment under pressure.

My work spans internal and external communications, executive and leadership messaging, organizational change, and high-stakes environments where language must be precise, credible, and humane.

“Lara understood the emotional reality of the decisions we were making — not just the strategic one. Her guidance helped us communicate hard truths without losing our humanity or credibility.”

— Senior Scientific Leader

My Background

  • 11 years as an in-house communications leader inside pharma and biotech — Biogen, BlueRock Therapeutics, and Pfizer — plus deep experience in nonprofit and academic environments

  • Led change communications through enterprise-wide workforce reductions, leadership transitions, restructures, and large-scale technology rollouts including Workday and Peakon

  • Architect of integrated communications systems spanning leadership messaging, employee experience, and external narrative

  • Trusted advisor to CEOs, founders, and senior leadership teams during growth, restructuring, and strategic transition

  • Deep experience partnering with R&D, technical, people, and corporate functions to translate complexity into clarity

  • Dual PhD researcher with advanced expertise in listening strategy, survey design, qualitative analysis, and organizational sense-making

  • My work blends strategic judgment, behavioral insight, and narrative discipline—grounded in the belief that clarity is both a leadership responsibility and a form of care.

My Philosophy

Clarity is an act of care. Well-designed information reduces friction, steadies people, and enables sound decisions.

Narrative is not decoration - it is strategy. The stories leaders choose shape focus, meaning, and momentum.

Leaders set the emotional climate. What is modeled, reinforced, or left unsaid becomes culture.

Change is identity work - at the organizational and human level. It asks people to reinterpret who they are, how they belong, and what is expected of them.

This philosophy shows up in practice through executive and transformation communications, narrative design, and leadership guidance, helping organizations move through complexity with coherence, credibility, and care.

Why I Created Arcana

After years of guiding teams through change, I realized something: leaders shouldn't have to carry the emotional architecture of transformation alone.

Arcana is the consulting practice I wished existed when I was the leader trying to hold everything steady - the ambiguity, the people, the narrative, the strategy, the fear.

Arcana exists to offer:

  • deep clarity during difficult moments

  • high-trust partnership for leaders in transition

  • meaning-centered communication for teams

  • accessible support for lean biotech teams, mission-driven nonprofits, and organizations navigating change without dedicated internal comms capacity

  • narrative design that honors the truth and the humans involved

This work is my craft, my discipline, and yes - my kind of magic.

Let’s talk about your next chapter.