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Speaker: Gwen McKinney, McKinney & Associates Gwen McKinney is President of McKinney & Associates Inc. (formerly known as McKinney & McDowell Associates), a firm she established in November 1990. McKinney & Associates is the first African-American and woman-owned public relations firms in the nation's capital that expressly focuses on social marketing. Skillful in strategic media planning around national public policy issues, Ms. McKinney has etched out a niche in advocacy public relations. The firm's clients include the nation's leading civil rights and social justice organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, American Civil Liberties Union, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Service Employees International Union, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, United States Commission on Civil Rights, Metropolitan Washington Council/AFL-CIO, TransAfrica Forum and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. The firm also provides regular public relations and strategic counsel to attorneys representing death row defendants as part of the firm's ongoing commitment to a fair administration of the criminal justice system. Formerly a reporter with the Philadelphia Tribune, Ms. McKinney began her career in journalism in the late 1970s covering local and national issues affecting minority and low-income communities. She was columnist and Capitol Hill correspondent for several newspapers including the St. Louis American, Buffalo Challenger, San Francisco Sun Reporter and Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate. Ms. McKinney's articles also have been syndicated in weekly newspapers across the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the umbrella organization for over 200 weekly newspapers. She also has written for Essence magazine, the nation's preeminent African-American women's magazine, and Black Enterprise. She has provided strategic planning and public relations counsel to coalitions working on issues ranging from teen pregnancy and adult literacy to tobacco control and health disparities in communities of color. Ms. McKinney was press secretary for Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton during her successful election campaign to the U.S. Congress between June and September of 1990. She assisted in crisis management, advertising, and general public relations. To add to her extensive domestic policy experience, Ms. McKinney has diverse international experience. She provided public relations counsel to a delegation led by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in August 2001. Ms. McKinney has participated in journalism fact-finding tours and conferences in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In 1995, she provided public relations coordination for a delegation of women organized by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law at the United Nations Conference for Women in Beijing. Ms. McKinney was co-founder and national co-coordinator of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists, a membership organization of U.S. journalists and media professionals. In the 1980s She founded and directed a special project, the Namibia Information Service that was supported by the United Nations. It focused on disseminating news to the U.S. media and non-governmental organizations on developments in Namibia during the period before the United Nations-supervised elections and independence. |