Profile: Kathy McShea Erville
Owner and Founder, Emerald Strategies
Kathy McShea Erville is a communicator by heart and a web management expert by trade.
She likes to make expression shine because improving customer experience is her passion, and communication is the key to CX.
She brings her clients expertise in both digital strategy and content strategy.
According to her creed, leaders in every organization deserve websites governed by strong standards, documentation, and measures.
She founded Emerald Strategies, Inc., to work with large enterprise dot govs and others to create and scale digital initiatives. Erville is a senior consultant with hands-on experience in public sector communications. Both online and offline, she helps people and teams work to communicate clearly and consistently.
Strategic Communications Skills
She has been working on digital projects that help citizens discover and access public government information resources and data for more than two decades. Her leadership managing complex website operations for large public sector organizations spans roles both inside and outside government.
As a management consultant, she helps clients:
- Improve their customer experience and strengthen customer service;
- Identify and advance goals for business and outreach; and
- Better tell their story about why they matter
She has built a reputation as a digital strategist and strategic communications expert who has helped enterprise organizations such as the USHR, the USAF, and the World Bank adopt best practices for managing their websites.
In her years of experience as a web manager and first-line supervisor, as both as a consultant and employee for large federal agencies (at both DOE and DHS), she built a successful track record of leading change by building, motivating, and coaching high-performing teams. She guides these diverse teams to make the right decisions based on their resources and strategic goals and then to work together effectively toward a shared vision.
In 2016 she joined CFPB as a content strategist with Consumer Response which is responsible for the bureau’s Consumer Response Center. There she works to improve their content quality by ensuring it is findable, actionable, shareable and understandable in various forms.
Past Performance
From 2010 – 2013 she put her company on pause to work at the Department of Homeland Security as Web Communications Director. In that role, she shaped new federal and Secretarial mandates to combine agency websites and led the agency-wide effort to consolidate CMS tools and migrate content to a common platform.
Under her leadership, DHS created a new web governance body which adopted new agency-wide standards and policies to close or migrate outdated and duplicative websites. As a result, the agency saved money and improved online services. After it’s launch, an independent study recognized the new DHS.gov website as one of the top two best performing websites in the federal government.
At Emerald Strategies has been an influential partner on several enterprise-level government engagements including work at the World Bank, the US Air Force and the US House of Representatives.
- At the World Bank, she was responsible for the field work for first-of-its-kind web management audits that set the stage for major changes in how these platforms operated
- While working as the USAF CIO’s primary user experience advocate, she championed enhanced usability and service level agreement standards across web intranet and phone channels
- At the USHR she completed over 200 confidential website evaluations to help them develop their first guidelines for performance standards
Before Starting the Business
Prior to establishing her firm in 2001, she was a Presidential Appointee in the Clinton Administration, serving as the Director of Consumer Information at the U.S. Department of Energy. There her efforts resulted in a new look and a new name for the agency’s homepage as well as a new gateway for callers: 1-800-dial-DOE. Government Executive Magazine recognized energy.gov among the “Best Feds on the Web”.
Before recharging consumer outreach at DOE, her career included posts as Media Director of the DC office of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, and chief spokesperson for US Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich.
She graduated from Georgetown University in 1985 with a degree in American Government and resides in Washington, DC. She is a certified usability analyst by Human Factors International and as an SPC Certified Help Desk Manager. She also has a certificate in Project Management from the Georgetown School of Continuing Studies.
Download her resume (PDF)