The Trevor Project’s approach to leadership comms in sensitive moments

At The Trevor Project, when a major social issue or news story affects the organization, the comms team and leadership ask themselves a simple starting question: Who’s most directly affected by this? Once that’s established, they ask: Who needs to hear from our leaders first?

Ngozi Magena, director of internal communications at The Trevor Project, a leading organization for suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, recently spoke with Ragan about the employee signals she keeps an eye on, the best ways leaders can communicate through trying moments and more. You can hear from more Magena at Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference this October.

Ragan: What signals tell you employees need to hear from leadership on a political or social issue?

Magena: There are some questions most internal communicators probably have in their back pockets. Are employees already talking about this? Does it materially affect employees? Does it have an operational impact on the business?

But there’s something inherently reactive about waiting for indicators. Being proactive requires intimate knowledge of our community and our organizational identity. We need to understand our people, our values and what we’ve committed to before. I’ve told leadership that I want internal comms to be a mirror of who we say we are. We’re reflecting who we already are and who we’ve said we’re going to be.

Can you share a time when employee feedback shaped The Trevor Project’s response?

In 2025, the federal government ended the specialized LGBTQ+ youth crisis services we provided through 988. That ultimately meant a significant reduction in our workforce.

From feedback after previous reductions, we knew employees needed the details of what was happening, but also space to grieve. With 988, that felt especially important because this was something that largely felt out of our control.

So we built toward a community space following the reduction. We brought people together to honor the work and the pioneering role Trevor had played in those services. It gave people a chance to turn toward each other instead of away from each other. We had to intentionally create that moment. It wasn’t going to happen passively.

How do affinity groups and employee listening inform your decisions?

At Trevor, our affinity groups are identity-based spaces where people can engage in community. I consider them one part of a larger listening ecosystem.

We also use surveys, feedback forms, conversations with senior leaders and regular meetings with staff across the organization. Then the people team and internal comms come together and ask: What’s going well? What are the risks? What needs more attention? When we modified our commemorations calendar, for example, we gut-checked it with affinity group leads and asked whether it felt representative and whether we were missing important cultural moments.

What have you learned about what employees need amid the pushback against DEI?

Our workforce includes many LGBTQ+ employees, and many threats related to DEI have specific implications for queer people. We knew this was something we wanted to address proactively.

That has meant investing more in our affinity groups and creating internal community spaces. Trevor also does extensive research on intersecting marginalized identities, and that work naturally informs our instincts internally. When an external moment affects identity and culture, we look at what we already know about our workforce and try to get ahead of what people may need.

How do you decide when a moment needs an organization-wide message, manager guidance or something more targeted?

A lot of it comes down to relationships. When something happens, someone from leadership might Slack me and say, “Let’s huddle and think through who this is affecting.” We ask questions like, “What do they need to hear first? What do managers need to support people?” Sometimes that means an FAQ or talking points. Other times, we engage senior leadership first.

We also have to be economical. We don’t want to dilute the power of our messaging by sending an organization-wide message every time something happens. We’ve developed six or seven audience tiers so we can ask how an event affects each group and what they need from us.

How do you help managers and leaders communicate confidently about sensitive issues?

Leaders need more than words. They need understanding, access and a sense of permission for dialogue.

In our biweekly senior leadership space, people can pressure-test communications we’re developing. They can ask questions, poke at the message and share what someone on their team might say in response. That helps us refine the message and helps leaders internalize it more deeply. From there, we can create FAQs and talking points and give leaders visibility into the communication sequence. A lot of the magic comes from letting people ask questions and test the message before they have to communicate it themselves.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.