Communications Leader · Strategic Advisor · Author
I work with organisations and leaders on the gap between what they intend to communicate and what others actually experience. The gap widens when the organisation is changing. Author of Authentic Presence in Executive Communication (Routledge, October 2026).
For more than 20 years I’ve worked in strategic communication shaping corporate narratives, strengthening leadership messaging and helping strategy land where influence matters more than formal authority. Much of that in regulated industries and politically sensitive organisations, where scrutiny is high and credibility is not assumed. I’ve led brand transformation across pharma, FMCG and technology, and I currently lead brand and corporate communications for an international pharmaceutical company.
I see communication as a business discipline: it builds trust, shapes reputation and makes change last. Treated as messaging alone, it opens a distance between what an organisation intends and what people actually experience.
It shows up when a corporate brand doesn’t reflect the organisation behind it. When a strategy is clear at the top but doesn’t land across the business. When leadership communication is well-intended but isn’t experienced as credible or relevant.
The distance is created and closed in what a leader says at a town hall, in how a specialist is heard in a steering group, in what colleagues repeat to each other afterwards. Corporate communication and leadership communication are the same problem at different scale.
That distance tends to widen when something is changing — a new strategy, a restructuring, a transformation nobody asked for. The stakes are higher then, communication is scrutinised more closely, and people are communicating under pressure. Any inconsistency in what is said or in how it lands creates ambiguity that slows the work down. Closing the gap is what my work centres on.
Authentic Presence in Executive Communication
The Playbook for Communicating with Impact in Times of Change.
Authentic Presence in Executive Communication helps leaders and specialists stay clear, credible and connected under pressure. Drawing on 20 years’ experience shaping corporate narratives, strengthening leadership messaging, and helping strategy land in complex, high-stakes environments, Trine Bastian shows how groundedness closes the gap between what we intend to communicate and what others actually experience.
Authentic Presence grew out of more than 20 years of working inside corporate life and seeing what makes communication land, what makes it lose impact, and what happens when the gap between intention and experience becomes too wide.
The question I kept coming back to was how we close the gap between what we intend to communicate, what others actually experience, and the impact we ultimately create?
That question became the foundation for Authentic Presence – a framework I developed to communicate with enough groundedness, clarity and self-awareness that others can understand and trust you. And ultimately follow and move with you.
It is not about performing confidence or polishing a message until it sounds perfect. Essentially, authentic presence is about understanding your intention, reading the context you are communicating into, and creating the conditions for your message to land with credibility and impact.
For leaders and specialists working to close the gap between what they intend and what others experience — most often when something is changing.
Strategic sparring on leadership communication, positioning, and the moments where clarity and credibility decide whether the message lands.
Keynotes and panel contributions on leadership communication in times of change — how clarity, credibility and presence hold up under pressure.
Relevant for leadership conferences, executive off-sites, communication forums and client summits. In English or Danish.
Insights on authentic presence and communication — the ideas, the news, and the practices that help people show up as themselves and be heard. New thinking, shared openly.
External content and media.
Closing the gap between intent and impact
Authentic presence — the advice we forget to give ourselves
From Specialist to Strategist: The Communications Leader as a Strategic Advisor
For selected speaking, advisory or media enquiries on communication in times of change, leadership communication and authentic presence, please get in touch.