Sarah Grubbs is the Chief Growth Officer of TrailRunner International, where she oversees the firm’s global growth strategy while leading strategic client relationships. Previously, Sarah served as a Managing Director and Head of TrailRunner International’s Nashville office, after founding the Nashville office in 2021 to focus on the firm’s growth throughout the U.S. Heartland. She joined TrailRunner International in 2018 in the New York office. She advises clients on corporate positioning, international strategy and expansion, crisis preparedness and response, reputation and change management, and high-stakes situations such as IPOs, M&A transactions, regulatory issues, and executive leadership changes. Sarah works with a wide range of clients, including large international conglomerates, Fortune 500 companies, newly public companies, and startups.

Before joining TrailRunner International, Sarah was on the Public Affairs and Crisis team at global communications firm Burson. While there, Sarah led award-winning reputation management and communications campaigns for a variety of situations, including financial investigations, litigation, regulatory action, data breaches, and activist campaigns. Sarah began her career as a news writer for NBC San Diego, covering national and local stories. Before that, Sarah was a member of the NBC San Diego investigative reporting team. Sarah graduated summa cum laude from the University of San Diego with a major in business administration and marketing and a minor in communications studies. She splits her time between Nashville, TN and Boston, MA

What is the remit and role of the chief growth officer in your organization?

We created a Chief Growth Officer role in 2025 to bring more rigor and focus to how we accelerate our business. We recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary, and have grown our business through a combination of strong client service, referrals from former or current clients, lawyers, bankers, and word of mouth among corporate communications leaders.

While all of those factors are still true, to scale, we needed a simple and systematic approach to growth. We’ve now had that model in place for a year and a half, which has allowed us to have data to make sharper decisions about the type of work we pursue and the industries and areas of our business that are ripe for growth.

We’re now focused on how we bring our business to the next level. We’ve expanding geographically, including in the UAE, UK, and the US Heartland, we are deepening our bench of talent at all levels, and we are investing in our strengths in areas like litigation, M&A, crisis, and sports.

What are the essential requirements for growth strategy mapping, continuous innovation, digital transformation and performance calibration across the enterprise?

High quality work and keeping a pulse of the issues our clients care most about is core to how we grow, measure performance, and innovate. Importantly, all senior leaders spend a significant amount of time serving clients. A deep understanding of our clients’ needs and challenges allows us to make better decisions.

A second component to success is that our entire team – no matter what level – has to feel excited to build something together. We look for talent who wants to be in the game, wants to solve hard problems, and wants to continue learning and challenging the status quo. With a cultural drive to do better for clients every day, innovation, transformation, and growth are natural byproducts.

While we have committees to lead innovation and other key workstreams internally that assess the landscape, evaluate the best tools, and work to implement them across the organization, it’s rooted in wanting to build our firm in a way where we can do more great work for clients. 

What data-driven insights and intelligence are essential to identifying growth areas and formulating sustainable growth strategies? 

When we think about external growth strategies, or how we win and expand clients, we try to stay ahead of the curve. We work to understand the market trends driving our industry, we look ahead at policy and how different debates might influence our clients or broader industries, and we look at the modern communications trends clients want to learn about.

Internally, to manage our own growth strategy, we look at multiple cross-sections of data. At a high level, we look at the financials, but we are also measuring key inputs and outcomes across all Managing Directors in our firm. We track inbound opportunities and where they come from. We track our wins. We track our client expansions. We look at where the most demand is coming from – industry, geography, type of work. We look at client health surveys. We want to understand exactly how and where we win.

What systems or processes do you have to anticipate, understand and react to new contenders, market disruption, geo-political, economic and technological change?

By nature, we work on complex issues that deal with geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts. We evaluate the trends we see carefully, and we regularly meet as an executive committee and leadership team to discuss how these shifts will affect us and where we want to invest proactively.

Which functional leaders and teams need to align and combine to execute growth plans and deliverables?

Every single person in the firm needs to have a sense of what their role is to help us grow. One of our proverbs is “this firm is ours” – and we want each person to feel that sense of ownership. That said, everybody’s role is different. Our managing directors need to know how we are tracking on our growth plan, what is working and what isn’t, and what we need to do to accomplish our goals. Then our broader team considers growth related to client health and team performance.

What external and internal forces are most impacting your company’s ability to grow?

We see a lot of opportunity. While the landscape is changing constantly, and there is more emphasis on new media and AI, there is essentially an unlimited and growing number of companies and organizations that need strategic communications support. We see legacy companies that want to do things differently, we see startups that are navigating their growth and, in some cases, their first crisis or their first major transaction, and companies in between who need to deliver on a key inflection point. Our growth is limited only by our capacity to reach the companies who need us most and the amount of talent we have to serve clients at any given time. 

Where is your company currently focusing resources and marketing spend to counter these forces and generate incremental growth?

As we’ve grown, we’ve been quiet by design. Confidentiality is key in our line of work, so you won’t see a list of clients on our website. We’re careful to not take credit for our clients’ work, and the majority of our business continues to come from referrals, returning clients, and word of mouth. 

Where we invest for incremental growth is in our people and our capabilities. We’ve had individuals named to various PR Week awards, Sports Business Journal awards, and more.  We were recently recognized by Chambers as a top firm for litigation work.

We also invest in convening valuable conversations. We’ll often hosted small dinners or events on topics like AI, IPOs, M&A, sports law, and more, bringing together top leaders in these fields to have personal conversations and learn from one another.