Director of Communications

Tolan

$120K — $150K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years in brand storytelling or media relations, preferably with consumer products.
  • Proven experience working directly with executive leadership to set a brand narrative.
  • Demonstrated ability to create content for diverse platforms ranging from lifestyle to tech.
  • Strong network with journalists and creators across various media outlets.
  • Experience building media assets such as podcasts or videos.
  • Bonus: Own platform with an engaged audience.

Responsibilities

  • Define and communicate the brand's identity and purpose with the CEO and founders.
  • Craft compelling narratives that resonate across different media platforms.
  • Cultivate relationships with media personnel to secure features in top-tier publications.
  • Generate meaningful stories to enhance public perception of Tolan and the company's mission.
  • Develop original media content to maintain a brand presence between press outreach.
  • Engage with the community to share impactful user stories effectively.

Benefits

  • Flexible working conditions with preference for remote work.
  • Opportunity to collaborate closely with executive leadership.
  • Engagement with a groundbreaking product at the intersection of AI and mental wellbeing.
  • Potential ownership in the company through equity.
Full Job Description
The role

Tolan is a new product. It's also the leading edge of the most important social shift of the next fifty years: people working out their relationship with AI, and what that does to their relationships with each other.

Your job is to tell two stories. One is Tolan itself, the product and the difference it makes in the lives of the people it serves. The other is bigger, about Tolan the company and where it sits in this larger rethinking of how we relate to AI, and to each other. You'll tell both through an optimistic lens, grounded in evidence. We take a research-driven approach, led by Lily Doyle, and our studies show Tolan measurably reducing users' anxiety and improving their wellbeing.

This role requires balancing prestige narrative-setting with hands-on execution. You'll pitch and partner with existing publications, and build the channels and assets we own ourselves.
What you'll do

Own the narrative
  • Work directly with the CEO and founders to define what Tolan is, what it isn't, and why it matters.
  • Write the messaging that works for Call Her Daddy and The Atlantic in the same week.
  • Keep our users at the center of the narrative.

Drive earned media
  • Build relationships with journalists, editors, and producers across lifestyle, culture, tech, mental health, and entertainment, landing everything from a New York Times feature to a Drew Barrymore segment.
  • Land stories about Tolan and the broader shift in how people relate to AI, making the Tolan Research Team a voice the press trusts on where AI helps and where it hurts.
  • Reach the heartland, not just NY and LA: regional TV, women's magazines, podcast networks, faith-adjacent media.
  • Get close to our community and tell the stories of the lives Tolan has made better.

Build our own media
  • Make the media we own: original video, podcasts, and editorial that tell Tolan's story in our voice.
  • Keep a steady drumbeat of original content so Tolan stays in the cultural conversation between press moments.
Who you are

You've built consumer brands people love, with millennial women at the heart of the audience. You've done it early, at companies without a machine already running, so you know how to make noise without a big budget or a team to lean on. You're senior enough to set the strategy and hands-on enough to write the pitch yourself.

You move easily between earned and owned media. You can land a story in a national outlet and build the channel that tells the next one. And you can point to the proof: specific coverage you placed and specific assets you built, work you led, not just contributed to.

Bonus points if you have your own platform: a Substack, a podcast, an audience that follows your work. The best person for this has built attention from nothing, because they've done it for themselves.

You don't need a traditional comms background. If you're exceptional and you can show it, this role is yours.
Compensation and logistics
  • Location: SF preferred. Open to remote, with a preference for LA or NYC.
  • Compensation: competitive salary and meaningful equity, set to experience.
  • Reports to: CEO.

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