A Storytime Session from the Civic Track 

When COVID-19 arrived in Connecticut in March 2020, Paul Mounds Jr. had been Chief of Staff to Governor Ned Lamont for exactly one week. In this candid story time session, Paul, now Vice President of Community, Corporate and Government Relations of Yale New Haven Health and Max Reiss — formerly Governor’s Communications Director and now Vice President of Strategic Communications & Chief Communications Officer of Eversource Energy — pull back the curtain on what it actually looked like to manage a whole-of-government pandemic response from inside the Governor’s office.

From the urgent decisions made with incomplete information, the communication strategies built in real time, and the moments where leadership meant simply not flinching, Paul and Max will draw on their rare dual perspective — operations and narrative, action and message — to explore how those two functions must be inseparable when a crisis has no playbook and no margin for error. 

This session is equal parts leadership seminar and honest reckoning, designed for anyone who wants to understand how public institutions either rise or fracture under pressure.