BIO:

Barbara Bickel has over 25 years’ experience in the marketing and public relations industry, with expertise in the areas of healthcare, high-tech, business-to-business, telecom and consumer.

As a marketing communications specialist and contract writer, she is noted for transforming complex information into benefits language that business people and laypersons can understand.

Barbara provides the full range of communications support, from copywriting to total project management. She researches and writes the full range of communications and marketing materials for print and electronic use, including web sites, press materials, bylined/feature articles, brochures, newsletters, speeches, presentations, white papers, op-eds, sales collateral, advertorials, member recruitment and fundraising materials, executive profiles, new business proposals and more.

Barbara also develops image-building and marketing communications campaigns and manages project implementation, including events planning, logistics, scheduling, vendor negotiations, and onsite staffing with a virtual team drawn from her network of marketing communications contacts.

Prior to founding Bickel Communications Inc. in 1993, Barbara was a senior vice president at Burson-Marsteller/New York, a global PR agency, where she spent 13 years honing her craft. While at Burson-Marsteller, she provided senior counseling, communications direction and hands-on program management to key clients such as Gilette, Wyeth-Ayerst, Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, General Instruments, Dupont, IBM, British Telecom and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Today Barbara provides communications services to a diverse range of businesses across the country, from blue-chip corporations like Independence Technology/a J&J company and Equitrac to nonprofit organizations like the American Trauma Society and the Secondary School Admission Test Board to small, entrepreneurial companies like Raindance Records.

She also manages short-term projects for New York-Based and Florida-Based PR agencies, including Burson-Marsteller, Ogilvy PR, Hill & Knowlton, Fleishman-Hillard, Edelman PR, Ketchum and rbb Public Relations, supporting such clients as Florida International University, Genetic Disease Foundation, pain.com, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, American Express, e-STEEL.com and many others.

Barbara’s materials for client bylines have appeared in a wide range of publications. Her op-ed on online privacy for Sun Microsystems’ Director of Global Policy appeared in USA Today. Her ghostwritten articles have appeared in Advertising Age, Executive Excellence, MWorld (official magazine of the American Management Association), Medical Marketing & Media, Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical Executive, BioPharm, New York Law Journal, Paytech and Skincare Today, among numerous others.

She has written speeches for the President of Latin America/Global Crossing; the Managing Director/New York Office of OgilvyPR Worldwide; the President of the National Cable TV Association; and the CIO of Chemical Bank (now JPMorganChase).

Barbara has edited the books, Parenting Teens, by Regan Kenyon, Executive Director of the Secondary School Admission Test Board, and Stumbling Naked in the Dark: Overcoming Mistakes Men Make with Women (Traffford Press) by Bradley Fenton.

Barbara graduated Magna Cum Laude with Interdepartmental Honors from Hartwick College, Oneonta, N.Y., with a B.A. in Creative Writing. In her spare time, she takes graduate level creative nonfiction writing courses at Florida International University’s renowned MFA program.