Head of Communications

About the Opportunity

The Head of Communications is a senior leadership role responsible for shaping, protecting, and advancing the company’s reputation, brand, and strategic narrative. This role provides enterprise-wide leadership across external and internal communications, advising the CEO and executive team while ensuring messaging is clear, consistent, compelling, and aligned with business strategies, objectives, and culture. The Head of Communications serves as a strategic advisor, player/coach, and hands on partner during moments of opportunity, change, and risk—creating and guiding executive communications, public relations, employee communications, crisis response, and advising on brand stewardship,. The role partners closely with the CEO and executive team to understand our business strategy and the interests of various stakeholders, and to distill this information into a clear and cohesive communications plan. This role operates as an individual contributor, with the expectation to personally deliver critical communications outputs. This role reports to the CEO.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Communications Strategy & Leadership

• Develop and lead the company’s overall communications strategy, aligned to corporate strategy, growth priorities, and long-term positioning.
• Define enterprise-wide messaging architecture, core narratives, and tone that guide all communications.
• Establish governance, standards, and processes to ensure consistency, quality, and risk management across all communications and with external media.
• Lead communications for organizational change, transformation initiatives, and/or leadership transitions to support employee engagement and external stakeholder support.
• Act as a trusted advisor to the CEO and executive team on strategic, reputational, and sensitive communications.

Executive Communications & Public Relations

• Lead public relations strategy for the CEO, CEO direct reports, and the company, including media engagement, thought leadership, speaking opportunities, and public positioning.
• Ensure executive team messaging is aligned, cohesive, and reinforces strategic priorities internally and externally.
• Manage media relations and external communications partners or agencies, as appropriate.
• While partnering with other stakeholders, directly draft CEO communications including presentations, speeches, company announcements and communications, and talking points.

Digital, Social & Corporate Presence

• Provide strategic oversight and creation of all written communications, including digital content, social media, recruiting branding, and corporate messaging.
• Provide guidance on the continued design development, content strategy, and evolution of the corporate website.
• Oversee social media strategy and execution to support brand visibility, engagement, and reputation.

Brand Stewardship & Creative Partnership

• Serve as steward of the company’s brand, reputation, and voice across all touchpoints.
• Partner closely with the STUDIO team to provide input and guidance on develop and maintain consistent branding, visual identity, look and feel, and design standards across all internal and external materials.
• Ensure all communications reflect a cohesive, high-quality brand experience.

Employee & Culture Communications

• Provide guidance to the HR team on employee communications, including messaging, cadence, channels, and engagement strategy.
• Partner with HR/People teams to support culture, values, change initiatives, and leadership communications.

High Impact Situations and Risk Management

• Lead communications strategy during high-impact situations and crises, including both internal and external response.
• Partner with executive leadership and other stakeholders to ensure timely, accurate, and aligned messaging.
• Anticipate emerging issues and develop proactive scenarios, playbooks, and escalation pathways.
• Support reputation protection and recovery efforts when required.

Measurement, Insights & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track communications KPIs, including employee engagement, media impact, reputation health, and digital performance.
• Use insights, analytics, and feedback to improve effectiveness and inform leadership decisions.
• Review and add listening mechanisms where needed to ensure all necessary feedback is gathered and analyzed (media monitoring, stakeholder insights).

Capability Building

• Design the communications operating model, including in-house vs. agency responsibilities.
• Coach executives and leaders to enhance communication effectiveness and presence.

Qualifications & Experience

• Extensive senior-level experience in corporate communications, public relations, executive communications, or related disciplines.
• Proven success serving as a strategic advisor to CEOs and executive teams.
• Demonstrated leadership during change, and high-stakes communications.
• Exceptional writing, editing, and storytelling skills.
• Strong judgment, executive presence, and ability to navigate complexity.
• Experience partnering with creative and brand teams to deliver consistent, high-quality communications.

What we offer
At Kilroy, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within the role. The base pay range for this role is between $230,000 and $275,000 and your base pay will depend on your skills, experience and training, knowledge, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. This role is eligible for an annual discretionary bonus as well.

Our comprehensive group health benefits program is built around your total health and provides employees and their families with care and coverage designed to help you thrive. Our health and wellness program offerings include medical, dental, vision, with FSA, HSA options, Group Life & Disability, LTD coverage and much more. Ancillary programs include a retirement savings plan with a competitive employer match, employee support programs like our parental leave coaching program, wellness, and commuter benefits, just to name a few. We invite you to visit our website at www.kilroyrealty.com to learn more.