|
|
 |
|
Bios
Karen
Amrhine Horton and Andrea Axelrod, both consultants with a broad portfolio of communications experience, realized
they could offer clients greater support by joining forces. Beginning in late 2006, they provided public relations services
to the world's largest producer of outdoor music festivals. Read below about their individual backgrounds and click
further to learn about sample accounts.
|
|
Karen
Amrhine Horton
Experienced in all aspects of communications, from journalism to corporate communications to agency
public relations, Karen Amrhine Horton has focused her efforts on assisting a wide
range of corporations, professional service firms and not-for-profits develop targeted communications that position them advantageously
with their most important constituencies. In 2001, she founded
Karen Horton Communications, L.L.C., to create and implement tailored, practical communications strategies for clients who
prefer to work directly with a principal.
Clients
describe her as flexible, agile, able to fit into the framework of an organization and work effectively with existing staff.
Whether it is a FORTUNE 500 consumer company or a niche financial services firm, Karen quickly understands the business and
culture and then works with the client to simplify its messages and select the most appropriate means of delivering them.
Current
and recent clients include:
♦ Constellation Brands, Inc., the largest wine
company in the world and a major supplier of beer and spirits: Currently she provides counsel on a range of communications
issues for the community affairs department and writes the corporation's internal newsletter. In the past Karen has written
speeches for the chairman, annual reports and has been responsible for a number of significant projects.
♦
New York Wine & Culinary Center, gateway to New York State wines, needed an assessment
of its first year of operation. Karen was engaged to conduct interviews, analyze results and present findings and recommendations
to the center’s board.
♦ Security Benefit Group, a retirement and
financial services company that also provides back office support for large insurers and investment firms: Karen and a colleague
provide background papers, press releases, media pitches and marketing ideas.
♦ Mayoral campaign,
in Cayce, SC: Karen assisted a young, first-time (and successful) candidate in her 2008 campaign.
Other
clients have included Mariner Group, a large hedge fund; Pratt Institute; Gordian Group, LP; and Saint Barnabas Medical Center
(New Jersey). She also handled special projects for Hill and Knowlton and for banks previously known as Bank One and AmSouth.
At
agencies Weber Shandwick, Sard Verbinnen and Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart, she managed accounts and projects for a number of
financial and insurance firms including Bank One, Fleet Financial Group, Morgan Stanley Dean
Witter Investment Management, Nationwide Insurance and New York Life as well
as Boston Consulting Group, Marks & Spencer, Honeywell and the Smithsonian.
Her corporate experience centered on financial services companies. She served as director of corporate
communications for The CIT Group and manager of national media relations for Commercial Credit Company.
Earlier in her career, Karen was a columnist and reporter for the
Charleston News & Courier and a talk show host and reporter for WCIV-TV, the NBC
affiliate in Charleston, SC.
She holds a BA in English from Duke University and MBA in marketing from the Stern School of Business,
New York University.
|
|
Andrea
Axelrod Clients
value Andrea Axelrod as an imaginative and strategic thinker, writer and graphics designer,
and as a quick study with an acute ability to tailor message, voice and look to the occasion.
As a freelance consultant over the last decade, she has juggled
project work with several long-term clients:
♦ Chase Alumni
Association: Andrea is Web site and communications coordinator for this 1,300-member worldwide group of Chase Manhattan
Bank alumni.
♦ The Netherland-America Foundation:
Formerly communications coordinator, Andrea continues as the NAF’s designer for awards dinners and the Peter Stuyvesant
Ball (which she emceed for five years running). ♦
American Friends of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra: As managing director for 14
years, Andrea organized special events and wrote/designed direct mail pieces that raised funds and friends for the great
Amsterdam-based orchestra. She also booked and managed U.S. tours for RCO ensembles. She produced a joint concert by the
RCO Brass Ensemble with members of the New York Philharmonic, at The Riverside Church. Freelance projects have included organizing
a fund-raiser for l’Orchestre de Paris and the first-ever gala dinner for the
Arab-American Family Support Center (featuring Queen Noor of Jordan); writing and designing
an annual report for the same Center; writing speeches and/or annual report messages for Leonard
Lauder, architect David Rockwell and senior executives at CBS; editing and overseeing
production of major financial reports; and, in a quite separate field, providing historic research, script annotation and
Web site copy for HBO Films, including for the Emmy Award-winning film Conspiracy.
Andrea was previously a
senior vice president at Ogilvy Public Relations (Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart), where, as a member of the Public Affairs Group,
she was in charge of marketing communications for the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency
and both the tourism and economic development programs of I♥NY.
She taught the agency course on editorial production – the content of which came in handy when she herself began designing
for clients.
Prior to her tenure at Ogilvy, Andrea
worked part-time for other PR firms (Jeffcoat, Schoen & Morrell, Gavin Anderson & Company) while pursuing vocal training
and the tendrils of an operatic career that did not fully bloom. During these years, she provided communications services
and counsel to Mead Data Central (NEXIS/LEXIS) – which commissioned her to write
its corporate history – as well as to Seagram, the ILGWU, Major League Baseball, the
American Red Cross, ADP and Chubb, among others. She also sold articles to The New York Times, Cosmopolitan (e.g., ask her What the Cosmo Girl Should Know About Male
Midlife Crisis) and others.
She has served as the
only non-attorney member of the long-range planning committee of the Association of the Bar in the City of New York, and as
a board member of the Berkshire Opera Company. In 1994, Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart chose her for the Leadership New
York, the civic leadership training program then run by CORO and the New York City Partnership.
Andrea graduated cum laude with a BA in English from Williams College, Williamstown, MA, which
awarded her a post-college Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship to further her development as a writer. She also has an MS from the
Columbia University School of Journalism.
Following a summer working for Fred Friendly at the Ford Foundation,
she spent four years as an award-winning daily journalist, writing for the Easton (PA) Express
and Allentown (PA) Morning-Call, before returning to New York to study voice in earnest.
In that parallel life, she was a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She continues to
perform in cabaret and concert and in her original one-woman opera comedy concert, Shishkebopera.
She also writes specialty lyrics for corporate events and special occasions. She has presented an illustrated concert-lecture
on popular and art song of the First World War at universities, clubs and theaters: The Great War in Song: The Lads That
Will Never Be Old.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ganesha
→ multi-armed deity of success, wisdom & intellect
→ remover of
obstacles
Ganesha Communications
→ cost-effective corporate communications
for
companies, institutions, start-ups and projects
|
|
|
|
