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Cynthia Pike-Fuentes

Cynthia Pike-Fuentes is director of corporate communications for Euro RSCG Worldwide – Chicago, where she is responsible for all corporate reputation management including media relations, internal communications and brand positioning for seven advertising and marketing services product lines within the integrated business unit.  She has more than fifteen years of experience in media relations, crisis communications and corporate reputation management. 

Previously, Pike-Fuentes served as a vice president and managing director in the corporate practice of Hill and Knowlton, Chicago, where she managed corporate reputation and positioning for the Allstate Corporation – one of Hill and Knowlton’s 10 largest global clients – including crisis and litigation communications, sports marketing, marketing communications, and environmental and public affairs.   She also served on the agency’s national crisis communications, media relations and internal branding teams and worked with a variety of clients including Motorola, Baxter International, Compaq, Isle of Capri Casinos and Ford Motor Company.

Prior to joining Hill and Knowlton, Pike-Fuentes served as director of U.S. Strategic Communications for Arthur Andersen, where she served as executive consultant for the U.S. Managing Partner and chief spokesperson for the U.S. practice.  During that time she developed practice-wide internal and executive communications systems and was a senior member of a strategic positioning team responsible for the company’s inclusion on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America.”

Prior to that time, she was an issues communications consultant for Chicago-based Unicom/ComEd (now Exelon Corporation) where she managed media relations and crisis communications projects and served as a spokesperson on a wide variety of high-profile national and local media issues including deregulation of the electric utilities industry in Illinois, crises in system reliability and its effects on business in the City of Chicago, acrimonious labor relations, and merger integration communications.   She also led a team that designed communications to educate employees and the media about the effects of deregulation in the electric utilities industry, and served as a communications counselor and speechwriter for several senior executives including the CEO and Vice Chairman.

Before joining Unicom, she managed media relations for two divisions of Oak Brook, Illinois-based Advocate Health Care –the largest fully integrated not-for-profit health care delivery system in metropolitan Chicago and one of the top 10 systems in the country.   In this position, she served as spokesperson on industry trends including the growth of managed care in Illinois and the resulting effects on Medicare reimbursement and outpatient services.   She was also a key member of the system’s crisis communications and integrated marketing and business development teams.

As principal of Cynthia M. Pike & Associates, she counseled senior executives at Whirlpool Corporation, Advocate Healthcare and Budget Rent a Car, and handled corporate communications and marketing communications at McDonald’s Corporation, KitchenAid and Allstate Corporation.  

She also worked for seven years as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Herald (third largest daily newspaper in Illinois), the Middlesex News (suburban Boston), and the Boston Phoenix, and served as a special projects and public affairs producer at the CBS affiliate in Boston.   She began her career at WLS-TV/Chicago, where she assisted reporters and producers in the field.

Pike-Fuentes is a recipient of the Publicity Club of Chicago’s Silver Trumpet Award and received internal recognition for marketing and communications projects at Arthur Andersen and Advocate Health Care.  She holds a B.A. in marketing and psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with graduate coursework at Emerson College in Boston, MA.   She is a Commissioner for the Village of Lincolnwood, Illinois, and a member of the Public Relations Society of America.   She has contributed pro-bono public relations counseling for the Junior League of Chicago and the Heartland Alliance for Human Rights. 

Pike-Fuentes resides in Lincolnwood, IL with her husband and two young sons.

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Issue 7 - Connecting with the Prosumer: The New Imperative for Top line Growth