About

I grew up in the agency world

I've spent 20+ years inside PR agencies — the big ones, the good ones, the messy ones. Long enough to have seen just about everything.

I've sat on the other side too — as an interim communications director managing agencies — watching the same dysfunction play out from the client chair.

Here's what I know to be true after all of it: everybody in these relationships wants to do good work. Agencies want to do it. Clients want to receive it. But most of these relationships are broken in ways neither side can see clearly from inside them — and that's not a people problem. It's an infrastructure problem.

That's what Re-Rooted fixes.

I'm not your next agency. I'm not here to pitch stories, manage your social, or write your press releases. I'm the outside set of eyes that knows exactly how agencies think, where relationships go sideways, and what it actually takes to get them working the way everyone in the room wanted them to from day one.

I built Re-Rooted because I really, truly, deep-down-in-my-bones love agencies and the brilliant work they create. Re-Rooted exists because great agencies and great clients deserve better than broken infrastructure and a tired playbook that sets them up to fail.

Susan MacLaughlin, founder of Re-Rooted, seated in a warmly lit interior