the work Starts With Trust
Explainer Civic Strategies was built by someone who has worked on every side of the public affairs equation and goes into every engagement with a 360 degree view.
Laura Rodriguez-Carbone founded Explainer Civic Strategies because she kept seeing the same problem from different angles. Governments can’t see the value of explaining what they do, communities don’t trust institutions or their leaders, organizations can’t seem to reach the communities they serve, and grassroots candidates have the drive to run for office but lack the strategy and the know-how to compete.
Each of those problems looks different from the outside. From the inside, they share a root: lack of clarity and actionable community insights leads to messaging and brand decisions that don’t hit the mark. She built this firm to close that gap.
The Experience Behind Explainer Civic Strategies
Rodriguez-Carbone brings more than 20 years of experience in strategic communications, political strategy, community outreach, and project management to every client engagement. She has worked at the federal, state, and local levels, and on both sides of the divide between institutions and the public they serve. Her work has reached millions of people in hard-to-reach communities, nationwide.
She directed regional communications for the federal COVID-19 response, connecting communities across the country with treatments, access to vaccine clinical trials, and the public health resources they needed.
She ran a federal outreach initiative that kept Medicare patients on their treatment when the pandemic cut off their rides to care. The fix took partnerships most agencies would never think to build. She brought public and private transportation providers to the table and closed a gap that was costing people their care.
At the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, she led public engagement on the ADA, Title II, Section 504, and Title IX, turning civil rights protections into language people could understand, trust, and act on. Many of those communities had every reason to doubt institutions. Reaching them took more than clear writing. It took credibility, and she brought it.
Rodriguez-Carbone has also lived the other side of public life. She has worked national, state, and local campaigns as a strategist, managed congressional and city council races, and run for federal office herself. She served three terms on the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Executive and Central Committees and was the first chair of the Ohio Democratic Party's Hispanic/Latino Caucus. She has served on 20 boards, think tanks, and task forces nationally, and across northeast Ohio.
What Working Together Looks Like
You shouldn’t have to settle for generic strategy because you lack a big budget or a big team. I spend time understanding my clients so the strategies I build are realistic, specific to you, and built to hold up months down the road.
understand Your Goals
Everything begins with a direct conversation about what you’re trying to accomplish and what’s getting in the way.
learn your landscape
The first conversation is about you. What are you trying to accomplish, what goals you have, and determining what success looks like for your particular situation.
deliver and adapt
The planning, strategy, messaging, and materials we produce are matched to your goals and your audiences. We actively communicate during the whole process and as conditions change, the work changes with them. You get a partner who stays engaged, and an actionable plan that adapts to you.