Patricia R. Bayerlein

With over 15 years of experience in international marketing and communications, Patricia Bayerlein has advised local governments on international relations and developed business-to-business markets in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

For Gagen MacDonald, Patricia provides strategic communications counsel to global Fortune 500 companies to effectively drive change, engage the workforce and connect change initiatives to business results. She has drawn on her international corporate and agency experience to help clients develop strategic employee communications for mergers and acquisitions, to counsel clients on reorganizing their communications functions and to coach HR organizations on using communication strategies and tools.

Some of Patricia’s most recent experiences include working with a global international communications team at a $17 billion company with over 100,000 employees to deliver a worldwide communications strategy to increase engagement, retention and key performance metrics. Patricia also developed an ambassador training program for BASF during their hostile acquisition of Engelhard Corporation, a 7,000-employee company spread across 99 sites internationally. From planning to execution, she also led the organizational redesign of United Airlines’ Corporate and Public Affairs function to enhance its integrated planning and strategic communications capabilities. Patricia also counseled the corporate communications team and provided the strategic communications framework for Whirlpool Corporations’ merger with the Maytag Corporation.

Earlier, Patricia was a director of marketing at Cendant Intercultural, a leading training and consulting firm for global business. During her tenure there, she worked on diverse projects including testing employer branding concepts across 10 countries, auditing global workforce practices for multiple Fortune 500 companies and advising several multinational companies on building global leadership capabilities for international assignees. Her clients included Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak and Motorola.

Patricia began her career in international marketing while working for a global electronics manufacturer that developed products for such companies as Bosch, Black & Decker, Hitachi, Motorola, Nokia and Panasonic. She was responsible for managing marketing strategies for emerging markets and measuring international customer satisfaction. Patricia also spent two years as an international relations advisor to the mayor of Kawaguchi City, near Tokyo, where she was one of 25 candidates selected worldwide to support international communications for local government initiatives.

Patricia is a member of the Institute for Public Relations Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation. Along with being conversant in Japanese and German, she has studied Sanskrit, Hindi, French and Classical Chinese.

Education:
Northwestern University, B.A., Art History / Art Theory and Practice
University of Wisconsin – Madison, doctoral candidate/ FLAS (Fellow in Asian Studies)