Keith Burton, president of the communications company Insidedge, will visit the on Monday, Oct. 11, at 6 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. He will speak on “The Real Truth About Corporate Values: How Customers Experience the ‘Internal Brands’ of America’s Leading Companies.” His talk is free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU pay lots.
Burton is one of the leading industry practitioners in employee communications and change management. As president of Insidedge, he leads a global group of counselors within the Interpublic Group who are focused exclusively on improving organizational performance by building employee trust, improving internal communications and effecting overall change.
During his 30-year professional career, he has served clients including Tyson Foods, NASA, Boston Scientific, American Airlines, Visa International, FedEx, IBM Corp., Georgia-Pacific Corp., Miller Brewing Co. and Tyco Healthcare. He is nationally recognized as an expert in employee communications, crisis communications, re-engineering, change management, labor relations, corporate restructuring and litigation support.
Early in his career, he was an award-winning business journalist covering the activities of major corporations in the southwestern United States for Capital Cities Communications Inc. He also served as a Dallas correspondent for Time magazine and was associate editor of Texas Business magazine.
He was an Algur H. Meadows Fellow at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he earned degrees in mass communication and journalism. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at SMU, teaching courses in news reporting and public relations. He currently serves as an advisor to the corporate communications and public affairs program in the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU.
He has been recognized as Inside PR magazine’s Employee Communications All-Star and has won countless awards recognizing his work. Most recently, he was named the 2007 Professional of the Year by the Chicago chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). He also served as chairman of PRSA’s International Conference in Salt Lake City in 2006.
He serves on the boards of the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations at the University of Alabama and the Institute for Public Relations, and is an executive-in-residence in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at the Medill School at Northwestern University.
For more information about his talk, contact Betsy Feeley at (315) 443-7401 or eafeeley@syr.edu.
