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Surviving the Present and Preparing For Your Future as Communications Professionals

Surviving the Present and Preparing For Your Future as Communications Professionals

Jessica Edwards

Jessica Edwards is passionate about increasing awareness about mental health and wants mental health conditions to be treated as any other medical issue. She focuses her talents on building relationships with NAMI’s corporate and foundation partners. She oversees corporate events, external relationships with our many partners and grant processes. Jessica has been with NAMI for five years and is most proud of the way NAMI’s stories drive fundraising. She holds a bachelor’s in public relations from West Virginia University, and a master’s in public relations and corporate communications from Georgetown University.

Chuck Harman

Chuck Harman’s 35-year communications career has included key positions with national non-profit organizations, health care companies and academia. He is currently director of patient engagement and advocacy at Neurocrine Biosciences and a member of the adjunct faculty at the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University. He was the keynote speaker at the International Experience Exchange for Patient Organizations in Zurich, Switzerland in 2013 and led patient advocacy training throughout Australia in 2015. He is the author of a chapter in Cases in Public Relations Strategy. Earlier this year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness and was named the nation’s top adjunct professor in 2019 by a division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.