Edward Pittman is a creative and strategic communications executive with more than 15 years of experience driving operations for high-profile international companies. He utilizes his diverse background in strategic global communications, channel development, speechwriting, agency-side experience, project management and policy development to stimulate revenue gains, cost reductions and long-term growth. He is a motivational leader and communicator, capable of building cohesion, understanding and engagement across all levels of management, staff and customers. As an inspirational and focused manager, he has the ability to align organizational systems, unleash individual talents and build long-lived internal and external relationships.
Strategic Planning – Global Internal and External Communications – Change Management – Online Reputation Management – Turnarounds and Restructuring – Executive Messaging and Speechwriting – Agency-Side Creative Direction – Project Management – Branding – Policy Development – International Business
Founded in 2003, The Carrington Family of Companies has evolved into a group of 18 vertically integrated businesses that direct every aspect of the lifecycle of single-family assets through operations in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy. With year-over-year growth averaging 20 percent, Carrington demands continually evolving PR and internal strategies to effectively communicate wildly diverse product and service offerings, company evolution and news from Carrington Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit that builds homes for catastrophically wounded military veterans. Successes to date have included designing and launching a SharePoint 2016 social intranet, crafting a voice for the founder and CEO, increasing the number of intranet stories by 250 percent over prior year and leading an initiative to educate senior leadership and improve Carrington’s reputation on Glassdoor.
Comprised of more than a dozen different companies, Xome is aggressively acquiring technologies to enhance its best-in-class real estate system. When Pittman joined the company, then named Solutionstar, an occasional email was the sum total of company communications. To engage and inform Xome employees in the United States and India, he created a number of print and online channels, including a Jive-based intranet, digital signs at company headquarters, a print and digital monthly newsletter, weekly meetings for all workgroups, a weekly all-company call with CEO Kal Raman and more. As Xome continues to absorb companies, warmly welcoming the employees of those companies is paramount. Other priorities include managing Xome’s online reputation and creating a variety of external communications for key clients and partners.
At JCPenney, Pittman's overriding challenge was improving low morale and retaining top talent during the most serious turnaround and transformation situation in the history of this legendary company. With the ouster of CEO Ron Johnson in April 2013, the subsequent departure of several key members of the executive team and a cash crunch that was once the daily topic of national media, internal communications provides critical support to the business by encouraging frontline employees to convert customers, drive sales and provide first-rate customer service at all times. During a time when stability was seldom found, Pittman created a dependable, trustworthy voice to keep employees informed of the multitude of changes coming their way, helping them understand their roles in a company in flux.
At Brink’s, Incorporated, Pittman managed internal communications reaching more than 71,000 employees in more than 100 countries. He was hired to create a dedicated internal communications program where one did not exist, and also wrote key external messages, crisis communications messages, video scripts and a multitude of C-level business communications and speeches. In a turnaround situation, as the communications representative on the Brink’s change management team, Pittman converted change management objectives into deliverables focused on realigning the business units of a Fortune 500 corporation, winning the war for talent and driving revenues in a challenging economy.
Previously, at the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), Pittman served as editor of the Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline, a scholarly, peer-reviewed quarterly medical journal. He also formulated and executed short-term and long-term communications and marketing strategies, wrote messages for the CEO and the board chair Regina M. Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A., who later was appointed U.S. Surgeon General. One project, reporting directly to the CEO, involved leading a six-person team to develop the next generation www.fsmb.org website.
Previous accomplishments include the following: While serving as Art Director for top-tier advertising agency Shierholz Saxer (formerly DDB Vienna) in Vienna, Austria, Pittman supervised two design teams, a copywriting team and provided multilingual creative direction for such clients as Audi AG, Gruppo Generali, Mayr-Melnhof Karton AG, Neutrogena and Roc. At Club Corporation of America, as Editor in Chief of Private Clubs, an international magazine with a paid, audited circulation of more than 350,000, he managed an editorial and design staff of six, as well as diverse freelance writers, and reported to the senior vice president and CEO.
IABC Bronze Quill Award, 2007, 1998
IABC Bronze Quill Award of Merit, 1998
Folio: Magazine Editorial Excellence Awards, 1997
Western Publications Association Maggie Awards, 1990-98
