Monticello, Illinois, July 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Santos McLeese, LLC today announced the next phase of the firm’s growth through an expanded fractional executive leadership model, marked by the appointment of the firm’s Founder and CEO Stefanie Santos McLeese as Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for Bluestem Financial Advisors.
In her role, Santos McLeese serves alongside Bluestem’s executive leadership team, aligning brand strategy, communications, stakeholder engagement, and market positioning with the firm’s long-term business objectives. Her work supports enterprise growth, organizational alignment, and strategic priorities through an integrated approach to leadership and communication. Santos McLeese, LLC serves as an extension of executive leadership, combining senior strategic counsel with the depth and capacity of a multidisciplinary consulting team to help organizations align business strategy, stakeholders, and communication across organizations, regions, and markets.
“Communication is an instrument of business strategy,” said Stefanie Santos McLeese, Founder and CEO of Santos McLeese, LLC. “Organizations build lasting brand equity when leaders intentionally align communication with culture, operations, and decision making. Our role is to help clients build communication structure that scales while maintaining the trust, clarity, and human connection that enable people and organizations to thrive.”
The firm’s evolution reflects more than a decade of helping organizations navigate growth, organizational change, and increasing complexity. Most recently, Santos McLeese, LLC concluded a four-year strategic engagement supporting the North American growth strategy of global agricultural company GDM, serving as an extension of the company’s global corporate communications leadership. The engagement included executive communications, stakeholder alignment, acquisition and integration communications, development of GDM’s first dedicated U.S. communications function, and strategic communications support for the relocation of the company’s North American headquarters to the University of Illinois Research Park.
More recently, Santos McLeese, LLC led the strategic brand refresh for the Community Foundation of East Central Illinois, helping clarify the organization’s value proposition, strengthen stakeholder engagement, and position the foundation for its next chapter of community impact.
The firm’s growth is accompanied by the expanding national profile of its founder. In 2026, Stefanie Santos McLeese received the National TRIO Achiever Award and returned to the Council for Opportunity in Education’s National Student Leadership Congress in Washington, D.C., as a keynote speaker nearly three decades after participating in the program as a first-generation college student. In 2025, she was invited to deliver two workshops during Super Bowl LIX week as part of the NFL Legends Business Owners Summit in New Orleans, equipping former NFL players turned entrepreneurs with strategies for clarifying their value proposition and building authentic brand narratives for long-term business growth. She also serves on the planning committee for the inaugural Illinois Chamber of Commerce Global Exports Summit and was selected by the Chamber’s International Business Council to support programming for visiting Romanian business leaders exploring U.S. market expansion through Illinois. Illinois Chamber President Jimmy Clayton has also invited her to serve as ambassador for the forming Sports Business Council.
About Santos McLeese, LLC. Founded in 2011, Santos McLeese, LLC is a Latina-owned strategic communications consultancy headquartered in Monticello, Illinois. The firm specializes in executive communications, brand strategy, stakeholder engagement, organizational positioning, communications infrastructure, and fractional executive leadership for organizations navigating growth, transformation, and complex stakeholder environments.
Santos McLeese, LLC is federally certified by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and participates in the Illinois Business Enterprise Program (BEP), Illinois Procurement Gateway, and Illinois State Set-Aside Program. The consultancy partners with private-sector, public-sector, nonprofit, higher education, healthcare, economic development, and internationally expanding organizations to build communication systems that strengthen trust, increase organizational capacity, and support long-term growth.
- Stefanie Santos McLeese, Founder & CEO, Santos McLeese, LLC