Carol Hickins

Communications Commander: Ignites brand potential with strategic PR initiatives, transforming awareness into measurable business outcomes and fostering enduring market presence.

Carol has over 25 years’ experience leading teams and building impactful communications platforms and global program initiatives for industry leaders and challengers throughout the corporate, consumer and technology sectors. She is a creative and savvy PR practitioner who throughout her career has built a strong track record of delivering results for clients such as Upwork, Fujitsu, QAD, Teradata, IBM, Microsoft, IPC Systems, Proofpoint, SunGard Financial Systems, DirecTV, CuriosityStream, The North Face, JVC, and Heineken, just to name a few.

As a communications consultant, Carol leverages her decades of experience to deliver a powerful combination of seasoned strategic counsel, a strong network of relationships with key influencers, and an “in the trenches” approach to help her clients craft impactful storytelling across earned, paid and owned channels. Carol is an in-demand writer with a strong focus of her practice centered around content development, from executive communications to speech writing to contributed content and blogs, and much more. She is an expert at crafting the right stories to cement executive thought leadership in a compelling voice that reaches the right audiences across vertical industry and business landscapes. She opens the doors for her clients to facilitate deep relationships among key influencers in the media landscape as well, generating feature coverage and thought leadership opportunities in in such leading outlets as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, USA Today, GQ, Forbes, Fortune, Vogue, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, among many others. She has also been featured as a guest columnist at American Express’ SMB initiative.

Prior to consulting, Carol was a partner at Finn Partners for nine years where she was a senior team leader of the firm’s technology practice, managing the group’s clients, practice G&A and team development. Her clients included The North Face, Fujitsu, Teradata, JVC, IPC Systems, and SunGard, among others. Carol joined the firm from Euro RSCG Magnet, where as vice president and deputy national technology practice leader she served as lead senior counselor managing public relations and integrated marketing campaigns for such well-known technology brands as IBM, JVC and Symbol Technologies. Carol’s diverse background also includes developing and implementing buzz marketing campaigns for Symantec and serving as a lead strategist and manager for Heineken’s launch of its new premium light lager brand.

Prior to Euro RSCG Magnet, Carol Sloane & Company where she managed several technology and new media accounts including Net2Phone, Veeco Instruments, GetConnected and IPWireless. Carol joined Sloane & Company from Shandwick International’s technology division where she directed consumer technology and new media accounts including the Sharp Electronics Corporation, Muze, and etown.com. At Shandwick, Carol developed in-depth experience in consumer branding and reputation management.

Prior to Shandwick, Carol worked at Middleberg + Associates, where she managed consumer new media e-commerce and entertainment accounts including brandwise.com, beenz.com, MTV.com, CollegeClub.com, Zeeks.com, and brandsforless.com.

Carol began her public relations career at Miller/Shandwick Technologies, where she led the New York office’s regional and national consumer lifestyle launches of the Compaq Presario line of home computers, the Compaq PC Theatre and the Agfa ePhoto 1280 digital camera.

Carol holds a bachelor’s degree of science from Cornell University, where she majored in Communications and minored in Psychology.