T2B Monthly | July 2026

Hi!

Intent vs. impact. Busyness vs. productivity. Output vs. outcomes.

These are the philosophical questions we're pondering in the not-as-quiet-as-we'd-tricked-ourselves-into-thinking summer months.

With competing priorities galore, more audiences than we communicators can count, and seemingly less and less time at hand, we must stay unequivocally focused on how to own the outcomes that will move hearts and minds. Read on to see how we're translating this into upcoming T2B programming.

And enjoy the rest of your summer! Happy Friday.

Today's email is 2,359 words, an 8-minute read.

🗓️ T2B programming snapshot

» Q3 Masterclass: The Coaching Mindset for Communicators | Wednesday, August 5th @ 12-1 p.m. ET

As biopharma communicators, we spend much of our time helping other people navigate competing priorities and change. In our Q3 masterclass, Anca Ammon, Ph.D., a communications strategist, executive coach, and neuroscientist by training, will lead a discussion about coaching concepts and tools that communicators can apply to better understand differing perspectives, lead difficult conversations, and help teams make clearer decisions.

Sign up here. | Free and exclusive to T2B Pro and Student members (Basic members not permitted).

» August Comm Convo: Rethinking What We Ask of Patients | Thursday, August 20th @ 12-1 p.m. ET

Biopharma companies often ask patients to share their stories. This month's Comm Convo will explore how expectations around compensation, influence, and partnership are reshaping patient engagement, and how communicators can navigate this changing space. This discussion will lay the groundwork for upcoming T2B Patient Advocacy & Engagement Roundtable programming. Mark your calendars!

Speakers TBA + registration details coming soon!

» T2B Info Session | Tuesday, August 25th @ 12:30-1 p.m. ET

We know we have a LOT happening across the T2B community. As we move into the back half of the year, we're hosting a short, 30-minute info session to review our programming and how to maximize your T2B membership. Regardless if you're new to T2B or have been involved for a while now, this is a great way to see what's coming next!

Free for everyone in the T2B community. RSVP here.

» Q3 T2Bmeet @ D.C. | Tuesday, September 15th @ 4:30-7 p.m. ET

We're back for our second annual community meetup in Washington, D.C.!

Save the date – additional details coming soon! | Complimentary for T2B Pro and Student members. | $30 for Basic.

» Q3 T2Bmeet @ Philly | Wednesday, September 16th @ 5:30-8 p.m. ET

Join fellow biopharma communicators in the Philadelphia area for an evening of networking, conversation, and community. Whether you're new to T2B or a familiar face, we'd love to see you there.

Save the date – additional details coming soon! | Complimentary for T2B Pro and Student members. | $30 for Basic.

» Q3 T2Bmeet @ Boston | Thursday, September 17th @ 4:30-7 p.m. ET

Come meet biopharma communicators from across the Greater Boston Area for an evening of networking, fresh conversations, and new connections. This meetup will also include a panel discussion. Come catch up with colleagues and strengthen relationships within the T2B community.

Save the date – additional details coming soon! | Complimentary for T2B Pro and Student members. | $50 for Basic.

» Q3 T2Bmeet @ San Francisco | Tuesday, September 22nd @ 4:30-7 p.m. PT

Mix and mingle with SF Bay Area biopharma comms pros during our Q3 community meetup!

Save the date – additional details coming soon! | Complimentary for T2B Pro and Student members. | $50 for Basic.

» Q3 T2Bmeet @ San Diego | Wednesday, September 30th @ 5-7 p.m. PT

Close out the third quarter with an intimate mixer of T2B community members in San Diego!

Save the date – additional details coming soon! | Complimentary for T2B Pro and Student members. | $30 for Basic.

» Save the Dates: 2nd Annual Virtual Biopharma Comms Forum | Tuesday, October 6th & Wednesday, October 7th

As communications becomes central to business strategy, success is often being measured by outcomes and impact (vs. only outputs). This year's virtual forum, Owning the Outcome, will explore over two half-days how communicators can connect their work to business decisions, stakeholder confidence, employee alignment, investor clarity, and organizational readiness.

Speakers TBA + registration details coming soon!

🎥 ICYMI: Recent event replays

We aim to record most T2B virtual programs so you can revisit useful discussions or catch up when schedules get busy. Recent replays are available to T2B Pro and Student members via your Dashboard.

• ​Q3 AI Roundtable Event​ – ​How Agentic AI Is Moving Strategic Communications From Prompting to Delegating​
• ​July Comm Convo: Why Only Some Platforms Are Trusted When Everyone Has One​
• ​Q2 Masterclass: Thriving Beyond Limits: Fear Less & Flow More​
• ​Q2 Media Minds Roundtable Event – From Newsroom to Newsletter: Why Healthcare’s Top Journalists Are Going Independent​

🎓 Q3 Masterclass: The Coaching Mindset for Communicators

Communicators often joke that we're part strategist, part therapist. Whether we're navigating competing priorities or trying to move a difficult conversation forward, much of our work depends on understanding people.

In our next interactive masterclass, neuroscientist, biopharma communicator, and executive coach Anca Ammon, Ph.D., will introduce coaching tools that communicators can apply on a daily basis. She’ll discuss how to recognize the assumptions shaping people's perspectives, ask questions to uncover what's driving resistance, and how to distinguish between behaviors that create friction and the values people may be trying to protect.

Join us on next Wednesday, August 5th, from 12-1 p.m. ET (9-10 a.m. PT / 5-6 p.m. BST).

Register here (free and exclusive to Pro and Student members).

🎤 Save the date: Our Second Annual Virtual Biopharma Comms Forum

This October, we're bringing the T2B community together once again for our second annual(!) Virtual Biopharma Comms Forum. This year’s theme is Owning the Outcome.

As the communications function continues to encompass a larger portion of the biopharma business, success is shifting from what we produce to the impact we create. Building on the conversations we started at our June in-person forum (Clarity at the Flashpoint), this year's virtual forum across two half-days (October 6th & 7th) will explore what it means to lead across disciplines, make communications outcomes visible, and help organizations move with greater clarity, credibility, and intent.

We'll reveal the full agenda and open registration in early August. Stay tuned for more details!

💡 Holding the line on scope, capacity, and strategic work

Panelists in the "High Expectations, Finite Capacity" session at last month's forum described naming what success looks like before scope creep, carrying evidence of impact into trade-off conversations, and agreeing to ambitious asks with the conditions attached.

Each of those moves the discussion from what a team produces to what our work is meant to achieve. That thinking leads me to where we are heading next... As mentioned, Owning the Outcome is our theme for the October Virtual Biopharma Comms Forum, and this panel offers an early read on it – here are our top 10 takeaways:

1. Organize the team around shared work streams. A quarterback model where people move in and out of initiatives as needs shift lets a small function calibrate capacity, though it asks people to give up sole ownership.
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2. Read capacity in one-to-ones before it shows in the work. A growing task list signals strain late, and shifts in how someone shows up day to day tend to surface overextension while there is still room to move work.
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3. Diagnose whether the overload is temporary or permanent. Shifting work across the team or adding agency support covers a heavy stretch, and permanently added scope calls for a change to the model, since prioritization rarely absorbs it.
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4. Watch for the hero pattern setting in. Absorbing risk late in delivery earns credit early, and colleagues grow used to it, which leaves the function catching problems that belonged further upstream.
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5. Build a scope document and take it to leadership. A stop, start, and continue list built with the team and agreed above you becomes the reference point when the next out-of-scope request arrives.
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6. Draw the line between project and strategic communications. Day-to-day communications that keep a project moving can sit with the project itself, which holds the senior team’s time for work that only it can do.
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7. Answer ambitious requests with yes and the conditions attached. Agreeing to what leadership wants while naming everything that has to be true tends to keep you out of the blocker role, and puts the trade-offs in front of them early.
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8. Ask what success looks like when a plan drifts. Goalposts move quietly over the course of an initiative, and pausing a senior room to name the intended outcome can redirect work that would have delivered little.
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9. Feed AI your own messages and prior examples. Starting from approved messaging and a previous release or internal email produces a usable draft quickly, and returns some of the iteration a small team loses when a colleague is out.
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10. Extend AI guardrails to communications-adjacent colleagues. Administrators and leaders drafting their own emails tend to welcome toolkits and a community of practice, which builds consistency without routing more work to your team.

We also had an onsite artist this year to capture key themes, ideas, and conversations from throughout the forum. This visual storytelling board offers a different vantage point of a few of the 'you had to be there' moments from this panel:

📣 No universal definition of an embargo? That's news to me

A successful embargo requires trust. But what happens when communicators and journalists aren’t on the same page about the terms of engagement?

Up until recently, I thought offering news under embargo to a trusted reporter was clearcut and offered little room for ambiguity. Boy was I wrong.

Drawing on a recent pulse poll of T2B members, our latest Media Minds Roundtable resource, authored by Cammy Duong (LifeSci Communications) tells us bluntly that there's no universal definition of an embargo. She examines where expectations between reporters and media strategists diverge, why those differences matter (particularly for publicly traded biopharma companies), and how clearer upfront conversations can protect journalistic integrity and compliance.

T2B Pro and Student members can view the full resource here.

🤝 Using AI to help (not hurt) in internal comms

In this month's Culture Connect Roundtable resource, Stacy Nobles (BCBS MA) shares practical ways internal communicators can use AI to reduce certain work without losing the judgment, empathy, and cultural understanding that make communications effective.

A few ideas to put into practice:

• Use AI as a thought-starter. Ask it to generate fresh approaches for employee engagement, town halls, campaigns, or recurring communications; then shape the ideas around your organization’s culture.
• Give routine content a first draft. Start with necessary but less inspiring assignments, and edit for accuracy, context, tone, and voice.
• Help colleagues submit stronger content. Create a prompt or questionnaire that asks: What’s the headline? Why does this matter? What three things should employees know?
• Delegate the work that doesn’t require communications expertise. AI can help merge spreadsheets, build distribution lists, organize information, and summarize lengthy materials.
• Review everything critically. Clear prompts improve the output, but human oversight remains essential. Check the facts, challenge anything that does not make sense, and add the empathy and judgment AI cannot provide.

And I personally love that Stacy shared exactly how she used AI to help develop this article! She says, "I asked AI for suggestions on simplifying language; I didn’t take all of its suggestions but some were helpful. I also asked it to summarize the article’s key points to make sure I was hitting on the things I intended. And, I asked real people – my Ticket to Biotech peers – to review the article to make sure it sounded like me. Let’s lead the way by pairing this new technology with our most human skills – empathy and connection – to make our work even better!"

Read the full Culture Connect article to explore how internal communicators can experiment with AI while keeping the human connection at the center of their work.

👀 Seen on social

Some of the best communications ideas come from outside our industry.

A recent campaign from Chester Zoo (yes, an actual zoo in the UK), highlighted on LinkedIn by James Crawford of PR Agency One, caught our eye. The campaign began with a simple observation: people frequently make decisions (like whether to visit the zoo!) based on a quick glance at a weather app rather than by viewing the full forecast. As Crawford put it, "For Chester Zoo, that little symbol can reportedly cost as much as £137,000 in a day."

Instead of accepting that reality, the team reframed the issue as a communications challenge. The zoo built a coalition of more than 80 visitor attractions, backed its case with data, and engaged the Met Office and government to advocate for more accurate forecast displays. It then launched a media campaign that generated extensive national coverage.

This story is a reminder that often, as communicators, sometimes the best strategies begin with sharp insights. Whether we're communicating clinical data, corporate updates, or public health information, how information is presented and received – not just how we message it – can profoundly impact how people understand and act on information.