I'm Markham Nolan—a strategic communications advisor, digital strategist, and entrepreneur who counsels executives through complex challenges. Over the past 20 years, I've worked with leadership teams at media giants, tech startups, and AI-driven businesses, helping them navigate high-stakes comms, organizational transformation, & stakeholder alignment.
I've served as:
- Co-founder of NOAN, an AI-powered business platform.
- Senior leadership roles at companies like The Recount, WWE, CBS News, and Storyful.
- A consultant & mentor for startups, SMEs, and media organizations, helping them navigate growth, change, and monetization.
- A lifelong storyteller, coach & journalist. Words matter, clarity is everything.
I believe AI and digital transformation should empower businesses—not overwhelm them. I believe that narrative and effective storytelling are more important than ever as a result. My approach is rooted in clarity, execution, and sustainable growth.
Experience
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I co-founded NOAN, the AI business-platform for entrepreneurs & small businesses. I led all internal & external stakeholder comms, go-to-market messaging and content strategy, as well as leading the operational side of product development and assuming COO/CFO functions.
NOAN empowers users to structure and connect their business knowledge with AI, automate tasks & create content seamlessly. We raised $820k in angel funding, ammassed users in more than 20 countries, saving users millions of dollars and thousands of hours.
I stepped away mid-2025.
NOAN’s unique AI platform allows users:
Develop a single source of truth for business knowledge
Save hours with AI analysis of business data
Create marketing & business content in seconds
Connect more than 7,000 apps and services to trained AI assistants
Easily switch between multiple projects & compare content generation across LLMs
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I joined The Recount’s leadership team as strategic advisor on growth, product & partnerships. I was elevated to COO to counsel the founders through a rapid turnaround, ultimately advising through acquisition by The News Movement (Jan '23).
I led all stakeholder communications and due diligence processes during that period and had full P&L responsibility. The Recount was acquired out of Recount Media in early 2023 by The News Movement. I counseled leadership on managing competing stakeholder interests (investors, employees, acquirer). I led internal communications through a sensitive restructuring process and eventual wind-down. I joined TNM for a time as an advisor/consultant with the senior leadership team, advising them on integration and Ai strategy development.
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As VP of Media Operations at WWE I led six teams managing strategic programming of WWE content & its delivery to all digital platforms.
I advised executive leadership on digital strategy for products delivering $200M+ ARR, including WWE Network streaming platform (1.5M subscribers). Counseled on stakeholder communications for social footprint of 1B+ followers and world's largest sports YouTube channel.
I advised on international distribution deals, content monetization & metadata strategy, product and delivery tech enhancements, programming strategy, and ensured it all came together the right way to drive acquisition and retention around the globe, around the clock. -
Advised CBS News leadership on digital transformation strategy and audience development. Counseled senior executives on navigating the intersection of broadcast legacy and digital innovation during the Trump presidency's first 2.5 years.
I led large-scale digital transformation projects at CBS, counseling CBS News leadership through coverage of the contentious political environment and major breaking news events. I advised on how to bring together teams of journalists, product specialists, engineers, marketers and more to transform news delivery.
I developed communications frameworks for integrating a 1,000+ person organization in a large process of digital transformation & alignmentI led daily editorial strategy discussions with senior leadership to drive key coverage decisions
I advised Executive Producers of marquee shows like 60 Minutes, Face The Nation & CBS This Morning on digital audience strategy.
CBS News is a complex, storied institution full of amazing people dedicated to explaining America to America. CBS Interactive, similarly, brings magic to millions every day.
My work at CBS News Digital led it to a record-breaking calendar year, followed by a record Q1 (152% YOY increase in streams from 2017) -
I was Head of Visual Storytelling at Vocativ, having started there as Managing Editor. I was hired to counsel the founders and senior leadership team on an organizational restructure and process of cultural integration, aligning an Israel-based analyst team with US-based editorial operations in tech-driven media venture.
I built a data journalism & visualization team from scratch. I guided the organization through a successful pivot; traffic grew from 2M to 8M+ unique monthly visitors
It was a great introduction to American media and a steep learning curve -
Before that, I lived in Dublin, Ireland, where I helped build Storyful, the world’s first social media news agency. Storyful redefined how the news industry thought about newsgathering via social media. We built pioneering signal-surfacing technology and developed technical workflows that are now part of modern journalism’s best practices.
NewsCorp bought Storyful for $25m. It began with a group of outstanding journalists who are now off winning prizes for the NYT, CNN, working for the International Criminal Court, creating startups and training future generations of digitally-native journalists.
I advised the founders on editorial strategy, partner relations, and organizational structure as the company scaled from 5 to 35 people.I counseled the founders on product positioning and go-to-market strategy in the emerging social media news market.
I advised on organizational restructure as the company pivoted from B2C to B2B model.
I developed client communications frameworks for top-tier global news organizations.
I built and led new business development for the special projects division (drove $1M+ annual revenue, highest-margin unit)
I consulted with Google Africa on a major election-monitoring joint venture.
I spoke at TED London 2011 and TEDx Houses of Parliament among other high-profile public events.
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I am a lifelong storyteller, both visual and literal. I bought a basic film SLR camera in 1996, taught myself photography and a few months later, started out in media as a self-taught sailing photographer in Dublin, aged 17. After a few tours in newspapers and magazines, and a handful of detours, including leading teen programs in the Caribbean, volunteering in an orphanage in Tanzania, and two years running an embroidery factory, I bedded down in the world of digital journalism.
I have spent my life telling stories & teaching, using images & text to make sense of the world in creative ways. I’ve used my skills to advise entrepreneurs, small companies and global brands on how to position, communicate and win mindshare with messages that highlight their strategy with key audiences.
My career started with content and progressed into technology, and on into building and growing teams. The through-line linking it all has been the constant drive for clarity.
Helping people & organisations clarify and realize their potential, and communicate effectively internally and externally means everything works better.
I consider myself a constant coach, a high-EQ mentor and a direct, unambiguous workplace communicator. I love working with people to find a better way, to take an opportunity and turn it into something amazing.