Strategic Partners
I work with a strong network of designers, web developers, event planners, researchers, and others who provide public relations expertise for advocacy and issue work.
Ray Boyer
Ray is a communications specialist working with clients in the private and nonprofit sectors. Before forming his own consultancy, Ray served as communications director for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for fifteen years. Before that, he was head of public affairs for Williams College and assistant dean for external relations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Current clients include the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, NORC at the University of Chicago, Ingenuity Inc. and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.
Mary O’Connell
Mary is an award-winning communications professional and consultant, serving principally Chicago nonprofit and foundation clients. She served as the communications director for the Joyce Foundation for twelve years prior to starting her own consultancing in 2008. She also served as editor for health care reform coverage at the American Medical News, edited the urban sustainability monthly The Neighborhood Works, published by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. She has written numerous other publications and won many writing awards, including a Lisagor Award.
Jack Weinberg
Jack has more than 40 years of active leadership in citizen and issue-based campaigns. During the last several decades, Jack has been an environmental organizer and visionary thinker working internationally on issues related to toxic chemical safety. He is a founder of IPEN, an international NGO network of more than 800 organizations. He organized on Great Lakes environmental issues while working for Greenpeace USA in the 1980s, was an active trade unionist in the United Autoworkers of America and the United Steelworkers of America activist, organized a citizen coalition which defeated the citing of a nuclear power plan in Northwest Indiana, and was a leading member of the Berkeley Free Speech movement, which was the first in a series of waves of student activism in the 1960s.
Emily Culbertson
Emily is a web and social media strategist and trainer who works with foundations and non-profits throughout the United States. She also conducts research on Chicago’s emerging online news ecosystem for Chicago’s Community Media Workshop. Before moving to Chicago in 2008, Culbertson was the web managing director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a strategist and account manager at a Philadelphia-based web agency, and a multimedia editor for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Culbertson began her communications career as a journalist, covering Philadelphia federal and state courts for the Associated Press and several suburban newspapers. Culbertson is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in urban studies.
Demetrio Maguigad
Demetrio is the new media manager of the Community Media Workshop, where he develops and implements the Workshop’s strategic online communications and manages the development and production of new media resources and tools including web projects and the annual Getting On Air, Online & Into Print media guide. He is an expert on social media, online strategy and web platforms and has presented his work on how nonprofits can leverage the web at various national and local conferences and lectures series. He also has an expertise in video and audio production and WordPress website development.
Carolyn Grisko & Associates Inc.
Carolyn Grisko worked for WBEZ and in the administration of Richard M. Daley before founding Carolyn Grisko and Associates in 1995. Carolyn Grisko and Associates is one of Chicago’s premier firms providing public relations, public affairs and marketing services. Her clients include Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network, Smoke-Free Chicago, O’Hare Modernization Program, Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, and the Illinois Bureau of Tourism.
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