About us
The Company
Write It Well, formerly Advanced Communication Designs, Inc., was founded in 1980 to help people in the workplace communicate clearly and work together effectively. Our goal is to provide practical, relevant information, techniques, and strategies that people can use immediately to improve their business writing skills. Our business writing books and self-paced training programs were developed to make the step-by-step techniques we teach in our workshops available to people who were unable to attend classes.
Contact Information
Write It Well has offices in San Francisco, CA and in Washington D.C. To contact us via e-mail, please use this easy online form or call us at 510-655-6477.
Our Clients
Our clients and customers include Hewlett Packard, the City of Palo Alto, Chevron Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems, Granite Construction, National Semiconductor, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Bank of the West, FedEx Corporation, Farm Bureau Financial Services, the Port of Oakland, the University of California, and many other corporations, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions.
The People
Natasha Terk, President
Natasha Terk leads Write It Well’s business operations and strategy. Â She serves as the lead for most client projects and works with a team of skilled instructional designers and trainers to develop customized training programs and new products. Â
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Before leading Write It Well, Natasha was a management consultant with LaPiana Associates where she negotiated mergers and developed strategic plans. As a program officer for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Natasha directed a $15 million grantmaking portfolio and developed capacity-building initiatives. She co-authored a manual for grantmakers and served as a contributing editor for Write It Well’s recent book about e-mail.Â
Natasha is a highly-rated instructor for the University of California at Berkeley and leads on-site workshops for clients including Hitachi Data Systems, Granite Construction, National Semiconductor, and the Port of Oakland. She leads computer-based training and individual coaching programs for Hewlett-Packard. Â
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Natasha has given keynote speeches and large-audience presentations about business communication at functions including the Western Region Credit Conference and for the staff of the San Francisco City Attorney’s office. Natasha is a Director of the the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ronald McDonald House of San Francisco.
Media Relations and Business Development
Chris Pew, Director of Business Development
Chris Pew develops partnerships, manages contracts, and provides support for Write It Well’s programs and products. Before joining Write It Well, Chris was a Senior Account Manager with Thomson NETg –an e-learning provider that is now a division of Skillsoft–where she managed corporate accounts including Adobe, Google, PG&E, Wells Fargo, and Seagate.
Chris began her career at Oracle and has more than fifteen years of sales experience. She contributed to the success of early-stage software companies including Ninth House Network and Latitude Communications.
Jennifer Golbus, Director of Media Relations
Jennifer Golbus has directed the media relations function in-house for clients including Chalone Wine Group, as a consultant for public relations firms including Paige Poulos Communications and Edwin J. Schwartz Public Relations, and as the co-founder of her own firm, J.A.M. PR. Jennifer helps clients translate their sales goals into marketing and public relations strategies and develops strategic branding and messaging programs.
As Write It Well’s seasoned media liaison, she helps the firm create clear, pursuasive, media-ready materials that tell our story.
Program Development and Delivery
Melanie Wise, Director of Instructional Design and Training
Melanie Wise works as the lead trainer and instructional designer for Write It Well. She developed the facilitator package curriculum and authored the Leader’s Guide for Write It Well‘s popular training text, E-mail: A Write It Well Guide. She is currently working as a trainer for Write It Well’s clients - the City of Palo Alto, Satellite Housing, the Port of Oakland, and the US General Services Administration.
Before joining Write It Well, Melanie worked for over a decade as a business writing coach, workshop leader, copywriter and editor. Her mission is to help organizations increase efficiency and improve client and co-worker relationships through better communication.
Melanie draws on years of classroom experience when she conducts workshops and coaching sessions. She holds an MA in English with a Certificate for Teaching Composition from San Francisco State University where she was trained in their nationally recognized composition-pedagogy program.
In addition to her consulting work, Melanie is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at San Francisco State University where she has been teaching business communications, expository writing, and critical thinking, as well as mentoring new faculty since 1994.
Janis Fisher Chan, Instructional Designer, Trainer, and Author
Janis Fisher Chan has been developing training programs, writing training materials, and conducting classroom training in business writing and other subjects for more than 25 years. She is the author of several books and self-study guides on business writing, technical writing, meeting planning, supervising and planning, interpersonal communication, and other topics.
In addition to writing or co-writing many of the books in the Write It Well series, she has written four books for the American Management Association’s Self-Study Division: Managing Your Priorities, Making Successful Presentations, Communication Skills for Managers, 5th ed., and Successful Delegating for Managers. For Jossey Bass-Pfeiffer, she wrote An Academic Manager’s Guide to Meetings, served as developmental editor for The Global Executive Leadership Inventory, and is currently a developmental editor for the highly acclaimed Leadership Challenge series and other publications.
Testimonials
Write It Well transformed a crucial but often overlooked topic [e-mail communication] into a lively, fascinating, and extremely useful presentation. Members of our staff contine to aproach me to say how grateful they are for your advice on drafting clear and effective e-mail messages. Your program was exemplary and your materials were extremely helpful to individuals of all experience levels. As Director of Training, I was most impressed with your interactive teaching style and you use of vivid examples to illustrate your most important points. I have also noticed that, since the program, the clarity of e-mail messages exchanged within the office has improved!
We live in an era where hundreds of millions of professionals have put down the pen, and now relyon e-mail as a primary form of communications. This book should be required reading for both Internet newbies and new entrants to the workplace, who may be making the transition from paper to computer or from instant messaging and e-mail between friends, to more formal electronic communications.
— David Krane, Director of Corporate Communications (Google, Inc.)