Sharon Cullen
Vice President, Strategist
Some of the clients I’ve worked with
Sharon breeds tomatoes, hand-selecting seeds from her best vines for planting the next spring. As a consultant, she helps clients cultivate their best ideas with similar focus and foresight.
About Sharon
Santa Clara County, California
Sharon Cullen loves to make sense out of chaos — aligning structure, process and messaging to help large organizations achieve their goals. And for more than 25 years, she’s been doing exactly that. “I’m a get-things-done type of person,” Sharon said, “and I love new challenges.”
Sharon is an expert in helping large organizations engage their employees through times of challenge and opportunity, with a special focus on internal communications surrounding mergers, acquisitions and investitures.
She traces her original interest in this arena to an early job supporting a senior executive at a growing Silicon Valley software company, where employees were feeling overwhelmed by a deluge of disjointed communications on different facets of an upcoming merger. “I saw the opportunity to clarify our story, and help employees understand both our larger objective and their roles in achieving it,” she said. Her success led to a new role managing communications for acquisitions and integrations, and a career offering communications expertise to others.
Prior to joining the ROI Communication team, Sharon held senior communication positions at Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems. In these roles, she developed communication strategy; built communication teams; helped senior executives clarify and deliver messaging; led cross-functional teams to advance complex M&A projects; developed communications training programs for managers; collaborated to implement successful employee engagement and performance management initiatives; produced live and digital events; strengthened sales communications; and directed crisis communications.
Recruited to become Director of Internal Communications at Arm, a leading chip design company based in the United Kingdom, Sharon spent five years helping the company through a range of global acquisitions, divestitures, spinoffs and organizational changes. Along the way, she set up infrastructure and processes that transformed the way its sales organization communicates in evolving, virtual and hybrid work environments.
Sharon, a former board member of the International Association of Business Communicators, earned a BS in Advertising at San Jose State University, and an AS in Commercial Art from West Valley College. When not advising ROI’s clients, she enjoys vegetable gardening, cooking, traveling and walking her two rescued chihuahuas. She lives near San Jose.