Senior corporate communications and public relations agency executive with extensive achievements managing communications strategies for major corporations and several of America’s best-known brands. Strategist and planner with strong leadership skills. Accomplished at all public relations disciplines, specializing in crisis communications, issues management, integrated marketing communications, reputation management, consumer, sports and business-to-business PR, special events
and philanthropy.
Trained as a journalist at the University of Missouri and his first newspaper job, Don became a master at media relations in the 1970s at Cedar Point in the golden age of theme parks. In 1980, he joined Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest PR firm at the time and, after seven-plus years working for Procter & Gamble and other large consumer and sports businesses, moved to Golin as a senior manager on the agency’s largest and longest-standing account, McDonald’s Corp. In 1991, he moved to Cramer-Krasselt to establish a public relations practice, which quickly grew to a top 30 PR firm. After a second position heading PR for an ad agency in the late ‘90s, he turned to the corporate side of the business and spent five years as director of corporate communications for Nicor, Inc. in the energy industry. He then spent several years in the not-for-profit side of PR.
Don began teaching in 2011 as an adjunct professor at DePaul, and over the next five years, simultaneously taught at Columbia College and Northern Illinois University. In January 2016, he became a full-time instructor in DePaul’s PRAD program, teaching public relations (and a little advertising.) In 2017, he took over the Fox Sports University course and has also been teaching graduate classes since 2016. In 2015, he was named the adjunct faculty professor of the year in the College of Communication.