Barbara Jacobs

With more than two decades of providing advice and counsel to a variety of businesses, Barbara Jacobs’ experience spans across the spectrum of communications, advertising, marketing and public relations. She specializes in organizational and HR Communications, in change management initiatives and in driving employee adoption of new behaviors.

Her most recent position was as a national consulting leader for Spherion, a $2 billion recruiting and staffing firm, where she set up and supported practices in change leadership, diversity and inclusion and workplace communications. In that role, she created breakthrough positioning for the consultancy, established the sales and relationship processes and worked with oil and energy companies to help measure and solidify employee engagement.

Barbara previously served as a Midwest practice leader for Deloitte Consulting in change management, communications and total rewards. During her tenure there, she helped Sara Lee undergo a successful healthcare transformation, worked with Applied Materials to introduce an evolved business strategy, enabled NASA to identify and recognize its brand strengths internally and acted as a communications project manager for seven mergers and acquisitions. Barbara was also involved in a number of leadership transitions and benefits changes for the firm’s most valued clients. In addition, she was tapped yearly to develop and oversee various internal firm initiatives, including an SAP CRM implementation, an innovative client relationship approach and an Employer of Choice project.

Barbara began her career as a trade magazine editor for the American Library Association, and then freelanced for the Chicago Sun-Times and Women’s Day Decorating Ideas, among other publications. She enjoys long-term client relationships as a trusted advisor. She serves as an advisory board member to the Dean of the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and has been asked to develop performance metrics for call centers, to facilitate corporate social responsibility dialogues and philosophies and to audit employee touch-points with customers and consumers.

Education:
Chatham College, Phi Beta Kappa, B.A., English and Philosophy (magna cum laude)
Simmons Graduate School, M.S., Library Science
University of Massachusetts – Amherst, M.F.A., Creative Writing (partially complete)