Vice President

With nearly 20 years of public affairs experience, Joelle Ziemian has helped Fortune 500 companies cement global and national brands, prepare for crises, and garner media attention in Top Tier media outlets. She has also worked with non-governmental organizations and parliamentarians in emerging democracies, as well as elected or appointed officials in the U.S.

Joelle gained on-the-ground international development experience when she lived in Bucharest, Romania. She worked with hundreds of Romanian NGO leaders as a public relations consultant for World Learning. She prepared strategic messages and developed media outreach campaigns for NGOs active in every sector at both national and local levels. She trained spokespersons in media outreach, developed collateral materials, and helped build fundraising campaigns. She wrote Getting Your Message out: A Guide to Strategic Communications for Romanian NGOs, a manual that is still widely used in Romania. She also worked with members of Parliament and appointees to President Constantinescu. In 2002, Joelle did similar work in Kyiv, Ukraine, on behalf of Freedom House.

Before and after her development work, Joelle worked for Edelman Public Relations and Burson-Marsteller, two of the largest global public relations firms. At Edelman, she managed an influencer outreach campaign for the Edison Electric Institute that included advertising, thought leadership development, and media placements in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Journal of Commerce, Christian Science Monitor, and media outlets in key congressional districts.

At Burson-Marsteller, Joelle managed a global brand for Accenture, positioned Accenture clients as global thought leaders, and secured media placements in the Financial Times, Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and targeted industry publications. Working with some of America’s leading corporations, she conducted brand repositioning sessions, developed crisis communications plans, and trained dozens of executives in media outreach.

In the early 1990s, Joelle worked for Franklin, Blee, and Burling, a small public relations firm where she lobbied Capitol Hill and developed strategic communications plans for energy clients.

Before entering the private sector, Joelle worked as a press secretary in the Pennsylvania Senate, on Capitol Hill for Congressman Don Ritter, and at the Department of Energy. She has also worked as a television journalist in Pennsylvania and Maryland.