The Experience Behind the Work.

Cheryl Spencer-Morley has spent more than 25 years in senior-level communications roles across federal, provincial, and municipal government in Canada. That career has included real crisis situations — budget controversies, staffing incidents, public safety events, and political flashpoints — where the communications response shaped the outcome.

Media relations under pressure. Holding statement development when facts are still emerging. Spokesperson preparation for people who have never faced a camera before. Stakeholder communications that have to reach staff, council, parents, and the public simultaneously — with different messages that don't contradict each other. Crisis plans built before anything goes wrong.

Most organizations don't need a crisis communications firm until the moment they desperately do. Cheryl's value is that she has been in those rooms — at the senior level, with real stakes — and brings that experience to clients who are facing a situation for the first time. The framework isn't theoretical. It comes from what actually works under pressure.

Jordan Morley's municipal work has involved building online resident survey programs and preparing structured reports based on community data analysis for Alberta municipalities. That work — understanding how municipal staff operate, what data they work with, and how councils receive and act on information — directly informs the AI consulting practice.

Municipal teams are small. Administrators carry multiple files simultaneously. Councils need plain-language outputs they can act on without technical background. Residents expect clear communication about how their input is used. These aren't abstract principles — they're what Jordan has navigated in practice, and they shape every aspect of how SMC's Municipal AI Framework is designed and delivered.

The AI consulting practice builds directly on this foundation. The same municipalities that need help with resident engagement and data analysis are now facing AI governance obligations under ATIA, POPA, FOIPPA, and MFIPPA. Jordan's familiarity with how small municipal teams actually work — and what they can realistically implement — is what makes the Municipal AI Framework practical rather than aspirational.

Two experienced consultants were incorporating a new governance and strategy firm in Alberta. They had deep professional expertise and a clear positioning — but no brand, no website, no domain, no business email, and no digital presence of any kind. They needed everything built from scratch before their first client conversations.

SMC was engaged for a full digital brand launch: brand strategy and identity (logo, colour palette, typography), domain registration and Google Workspace setup, a custom website with AI-era visibility built in from the start (SEO, AEO, GEO, WebMCP), and a LinkedIn company presence. A coming-soon page was deployed within weeks of engagement start to establish the domain while the full site was built.

A discovery call established audience, tone, and design direction. The brand mark was designed around the client's core concept — the golden ratio — using a sage-olive palette informed by cultural sensitivity research specific to the Alberta Treaty region. The website was built in Next.js with a full structured data and AI-visibility layer (JSON-LD, llms.txt, sitemap, OG/Twitter) verified in static export before deployment to Cloudflare Pages.