Veteran Public Affairs Campaign Executive Rich Masters to Join BIO in
New Senior Position
WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood today announced the hiring of Rich
Masters as BIO’s new Executive Vice President (EVP) for Public Affairs.
The EVP for Public Affairs is a restructured position that will focus on
developing and implementing an integrated communications, branding and
marketing strategy for the organization. Rich officially will join BIO
on June 17th.
Greenwood said, “I am thrilled to announce that Rich Masters will be
leading a restructured and expanded communications function within BIO,
to enhance our ability to tell the inspiring biotech story in a
compelling manner and to help us advance the interests of our members.
Our companies are fast, innovative and game-changing in their
technologies, which are literally saving lives, feeding the world and
powering the planet. BIO must have a public affairs operation that
matches those efforts. Rich brings a wealth of public affairs experience
from the private and public sectors that is as varied and creative as it
is deep. I’m confident he will bring the same energy and drive to BIO
that our membership brings to their life-changing innovations.”
Rich Masters is leaving his home at Qorvis Communications, continuously
rated as a DC “powerhouse” public affairs firm. He is a battle-tested
expert at navigating the complex American political environment on
behalf of numerous trade associations, multinational corporations,
foreign nations and political leaders in the United States and around
the globe. Masters is recognized as one of America’s top political and
media relations experts and has developed a method for delivering
complex policy and political messages that resonate with middle America
and audiences around the world. His media training program for political
debate messaging has been featured in Businessweek, the New York Times
and Atlantic Monthly. He was an award-winning political journalist in
Louisiana, joined the campaign of U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)
in 1996, and served as her Legislative and Communications Director for
her first term. During this time, she and other centrist Democrat Senate
colleagues founded the Senate New Democrat Coalition.
“Working for BIO is an opportunity of a lifetime,” said Masters,
“because the companies that are BIO are the epicenter of every
single life-saving innovation we will see for the rest of my life. I
will fight to ensure that political leaders understand that they can
either work with these companies and be partners in innovation or
they can be roadblocks that could delay or even kill that innovation.
I’m excited to join Jim and the entire BIO team to tackle this critical
challenge head on.”
Over the last year, BIO undertook a comprehensive review of its public
affairs functions to assess our future needs. As a result of that
review, BIO split its prior Public Affairs Department into two new,
separate departments, each to be led by an EVP. Jeanne Haggerty was
named to the new position of EVP for Government Affairs and External
Relations last summer. BIO is now taking the second step and creating a
new EVP position to focus on a much broader and more integrated
communications, branding and marketing strategy for the organization.
As part of this restructuring and transition, BIO’s current Senior Vice
President (SVP) for Communications, Ken Lisaius, announced that he will
be departing the organization as of June 14th. Greenwood thanked Lisaius
for his service as SVP for BIO since 2013.
“Ken’s tenure at BIO coincided with perhaps the most challenging
communications environment our industry has ever seen, and he worked
to grow our communications capabilities, staffing, and resources to
address this challenge,” Greenwood said. “We appreciate Ken’s efforts to
advance our communications activities over the past six years, and under
Rich’s new and expanded communications role, we will seek to build on
these efforts.”
About BIO
BIO is the world’s largest trade association representing biotechnology
companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and
related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other
nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of
innovative healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental
biotechnology products. BIO also produces the BIO
International Convention, the world’s largest gathering of the
biotechnology industry, along with industry-leading investor and
partnering meetings held around the world. BIOtechNOW
is BIO’s blog chronicling “innovations transforming our world” and the
BIO Newsletter is the organization’s bi-weekly email newsletter. Subscribe
to the BIO Newsletter.
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Contacts
Scott Frotman
202-538-4846
Web: www.bio.org
Blog:
www.biotech-now.org
Twitter:
@IAmBiotech