About
The People on the Work
You talk to a person, not a department.
Eddie Kaufholz
Founder and CEO
Eddie has spent twenty years where the communication had to be right. He spent seven years at International Justice Mission, later led strategic communications at Bread for the World, and has spent years coaching the leaders behind the work: writing speeches, preparing executives for high-stakes stages, and sitting across from experienced communicators who needed someone to help them say it well.
He holds a master's degree in mental health counseling, and that training shows up in how he listens. Alongside the organizational work, he built a career in podcasting that includes hosting The New Activist, recurring appearances on That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs, and shows that together have crossed millions of downloads.
Bonus points
Eddie serves on the boards of Mended and Breadcoin, two organizations at the intersection of dignity, justice, and economic empowerment.
He has been honored with distinctions from The Webby Awards and The New York Festivals Radio Awards. All of those trophies were lost in a move, which still makes him a little sad.
He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his family and a cat named Waffles. To know Eddie is to know that West Wing references are not optional. They are load-bearing.
What Eddie brings
- Executive and leadership coaching
- Strategy before creative
- High-stakes communications
- Direct attention on every project
Anna McIldoon
Account Director
Anna has spent fifteen years managing work that could not afford to fall apart. She has led enterprise software products through development and go-to-market at Subsplash and Pushpay, run campaigns from concept through execution, and managed executive operations at the right hand of a CEO. She has also spent years on the client's side of the table as the executive director of a nonprofit, so she knows the mission-first urgency of that world and the pace of the one where clients pay to see results.
Chaos does not rattle Anna. It clarifies things. Hand her a tangle of moving parts, competing deadlines, and half-formed plans, and she will find the smartest path through it, then refuse to let it stay complicated longer than it needs to. As Account Director, she holds the whole project in view: what is essential, what is noise, and how a team keeps moving without losing what made the work good in the first place.
Bonus points
Anna serves on the board of the Road Ready Foundation, an Atlanta-area nonprofit working to prevent car crashes through tire safety education. She also spent years as executive director of The James One 27 Initiative, which strengthens organizations serving widows and orphans.
She is an avid runner and lives in the Atlanta, Georgia area, where staying deeply involved in her kids' lives currently means a heroic amount of time at youth baseball games.
What Anna brings
- Account leadership
- Enterprise project management
- Go-to-market execution
- The smartest path through
How PILLAR works
Eddie founded PILLAR around an idea that has always been possible but rarely practiced: an agency structured to serve the work itself. PILLAR operates as a modern, distributed studio. Experienced strategists, designers, writers, and producers, assembled around the engagement and released when the work is done. That efficiency comes back to the client in real dollars, and the result is a tighter relationship, faster decisions, and work that reflects exactly what was agreed to.