Hello There.
I've spent my career helping organizations say what they mean.
Most of my work has been corporate and nonprofit communications, branding, marketing, creating, collaborating, and working with individuals and teams at mid-size and large companies. I've written the policy change announcement, edited the magazine, revised the script, built the editorial calendar, defended the Oxford comma, and transformed the jumbled message to make it land with the reader. I've done nearly all of it, which is why WoodFish Group works the way it does — you get a partner who has already seen the thing you're dealing with.
Here's what I've learned across all of it: the hard part of corporate communication isn't always the writing. It's getting to the sentence that's actually true, and then protecting it through six rounds of review.
Companies often have a voice problem. But more likely it’s a burial problem. The voice is in there — in how the best supervisor on the floor explains a change to the team, in the way a founder talks once the presentation is over. My job is to dig it out and hand it back.
Michelle Freed WoodFish Group
Where the name comes from.
My daughter was born in Greenwood, Indiana. My son was born in Fishers. WoodFish is the two of them.
I found out afterward that the wooden fish is a Buddhist instrument that is struck to keep chanting on rhythm. It symbolizes wakefulness and diligence, and is used to keep chants in rhythm. Keeping a large organization's message fresh, aware, and on cadence turned out to be a fair description of the work. I'll take the coincidence.
The other writing.
I'm also a playwright, an essayist, a former columnist and podcast co-host. That isn't a side note — it's part of why the corporate work goes well.
Writing for a live room or large audience teaches you something a career spent in documents doesn't: whether a line lands. You find out immediately, and there's no revising your way out of it. That instinct — for rhythm, for the sentence that's one word too long, for the moment an audience stops listening — is exactly what content should be and exactly what most business writing lacks.
What’s on your list?
If you have a project that keeps sliding, or a message that isn't landing, tell me about it. The first conversation is free, and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for the work.