APR
Accreditation in Public Relations
Public affairs, media relations, ethical communication, and public accountability.
Background video: atmospheric footage of place and landscape evoking the land, history, and community relationships that guide CenterSignal's work.
About Phillip Yates& CenterSignal
CenterSignal is led by Phillip Yates, APR, PMP, a Colorado-based professional whose work connects historical communication, public affairs, placemaking, project coordination, and community-facing storytelling.
CenterSignal helps organizations understand the histories places carry, strengthen community placemaking, and tell meaningful historical stories that build understanding and relationships for the future.
Our Process
How CenterSignal Works With You
01
Understand What the Place Carries
Before communication begins, CenterSignal helps organizations and project teams understand the history, memory, relationships, and responsibilities connected to the land, place, institution, or public story they are working with.
This is where history-informed placemaking begins: by learning what a place carries before it is interpreted, renamed, celebrated, redeveloped, stewarded, explained, changed, or brought into public engagement.
02
Prepare the people Carrying the Work
Complex public stories need more than good intentions. They need clear language, shared context, leadership preparation, media readiness, and materials that help people communicate with accuracy and care, safeguarding your project against public blind spots and organizational risk.
CenterSignal helps project teams, leaders, staff, consultants, and community partners turn research, records, public memory, organizational history, and lived experience into usable public communication materials for engagement, interpretation, media, leadership, planning, and community audiences.
03
Build Understanding That Lasts
The goal is not only to explain a project in the moment. The goal is to help organizations, institutions, and communities carry fuller, more meaningful histories forward.
CenterSignal helps organizations correct incomplete narratives, welcome long-excluded perspectives, preserve institutional memory, communicate historical responsibility, and build relationships grounded in clearer public understanding.
Phillip Yates
Phillip Yates brings extensive experience in historical communication, public engagement, place-based storytelling, public land communication, and communication support connected to Tribal Nation engagement and government-to-government consultation.
He works to elevate Tribal perspectives and tell fuller histories of the Boulder, Colorado community — meaningful work that has supported placemaking, renaming, public interpretation, and more responsible narratives about land and community. That collaborative approach has helped build important relationships and extend history-informed storytelling beyond Boulder into broader public conversations.
Recognition
Selected press and recognition Award-Winning Engagement And Communication
Phillip Yates's Tribal engagement and public communication work has been honored with national, regional, and statewide awards — including multiple Colorado PRSA Gold Pick Awards earned for historical storytelling with Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribal Elders focused on telling the story of Boulder’s connection to the Sand Creek Massacre.
Organizations Phillip Yates Has Supported
Credentials
Discipline Behind The Practice
Phillip Yates is certified across public relations, project management, risk, and agile practices, helping ensure meaningful history is communicated with care, purpose, and discipline.
PMP
Project Management Professional
Scope, schedule, stakeholders, and follow-through on complex public-facing work.
PMI-RMP
Risk Management Professional
Anticipating uncertainty, surfacing blind spots, and supporting steadier public decisions.
PMI-ACP
Agile Certified Practitioner
Adaptive planning and collaboration when work shifts under real-world conditions.
Continuing Education
Professional Certificates
- Brand Management — Cornell University
- Marketing Strategy — Cornell University
- Public Sector Leadership — Cornell University
- Social Impact Measurement — Arizona State University
- Corporate Social Responsibility — University of Colorado / B:CIVIC
- Sustainable Community Transformation — University of Colorado / Coursera
- Business Strategies for a Better World — University of Pennsylvania / Coursera
- Sustainable Business Strategies — Harvard Business School Online
Community Role
Service Beyond The Practice
Phillip Yates serves on the board of the Niwot Cultural Arts Association, supporting Native art programming, public history, and local storytelling. This is community service, not client work.
See the Work
Start With The Place
Have a public project, redevelopment effort, institutional history, land decision, cultural program, community milestone, or public story shaped by memory, history, place, or relationships? CenterSignal can help you understand what the place carries, prepare the people leading the work, and communicate meaningful history with care, clarity, and responsibility.