Carol Cone ON PURPOSE Names New Chief Operating and Innovation Officer

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, November 12, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, a pioneering social impact and sustainability communications agency, has appointed Kristian Darigan Merenda as its Chief Operating and Innovation Officer. This move aims to enhance the firm's operational efficiency and innovation agenda, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI).

Merenda, a partner at the agency, will oversee the day-to-day operations while spearheading the innovation initiatives. She is the author of the firm's recently published "Purpose x AI" guide and has developed agency-wide standards for responsible AI use. Her appointment comes at a time when the agency is looking to integrate AI more deeply into its work, ensuring that it remains at the forefront of the evolving purpose landscape.

Darigan Merenda believes the next decade of purpose will see a shift from traditional campaigns to products, new funding models, digital tools, and social ventures that directly address societal issues. She also envisions a future where employee engagement is centered around people rather than programs, and AI-enabled services make impact faster and easier to measure.

The decision to join these two functions was deliberate, according to Merenda.

Merenda's appointment follows a long and successful career at the agency. She led the team that created Go Red for Women, the movement that made women's heart health a national cause, and stewarded it for more than a decade in partnership with American Heart Association leaders and corporate partners. Go Red has raised more than $800 million and won PRWeek's popular vote for the best PR campaign of the past two decades.

Across more than 25 years working with Cone at Cone Communications, Edelman, and CCOP, Merenda has helped conceive and build some of the field's most enduring initiatives, including PNC's Grow Up Great, now a $500 million commitment to early childhood education; the American Lung Association's LUNG FORCE; the American Stroke Association's Power to End Stroke; Johnson Outdoors' Clean Earth Challenge; FIRST's I Am More Than; and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. The initiatives she has built have raised more than $2 billion through corporate, government, and individual investment and guided the allocation of billions more. Harvard Business School and the United Nations published four programs she led, including Go Red and Grow Up Great, as case studies, and she helped shape research that advanced the field, from Edelman's goodpurpose studies to Cone’s the B2B Purpose Paradox with The Harris Poll and the ANA.

Beyond her agency work, Merenda taught innovation, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit leadership for a decade in graduate programs at Boston University's Questrom School of Business and Harvard University Extension School, and many of the practitioners she has mentored now hold senior roles across the industry. She also co-founded Atlanta(x)Black, a pro bono collective of changemakers working to end systemic racism in Atlanta's Black community.

An elected official in Canton, Massachusetts, Merenda is serving her third term on the School Committee and previously served as chair. She is currently helping secure funding and oversee the construction of a $275 million middle school.

Carol Cone ON PURPOSE continues to push the boundaries of social impact and sustainability communications, with Merenda's appointment marking a significant step in the agency's evolution.