About Jean Gonsoulin
Jean Gonsoulin is president of The Gonsoulin Group and a seasoned communications strategist. With nearly 25 years in public relations, marketing and corporate communications split between the agency arena and the corporate sector, Jean brings a unique perspective to client service and a deep understanding of corporate challenges. Her experience crosses a wide range of industries and her expertise is drawn from counseling corporate leaders at some of the most dynamic companies in the world. Among the practice areas in which she excels are brand positioning, crisis and reputation management, litigation public relations, employee communications and executive visibility.
Her reputation management expertise includes crisis and issues strategy, preparedness, training and response, as well as message development. She has helped companies mitigate risk and prepare for communications throughout the life cycle of crisis or emergency situations affecting large numbers of populations or constituents. Among the situations in which she has been tapped for crisis counsel are the devastating BP plant explosion in Texas City, product recalls related to e.Coli in bagged produce and ground beef, nursing home litigation, and high-profile cases involving hospital errors. Jean works with clients across a wide range of industries, and her clients are among the most recognizable names in the world, including Toyota, ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil and Dole.
She has extensive experience training spokespersons and other communicators within an organization to deliver not only information, but the key messages that are critical to understanding and acceptance. Among her areas of training skills specialization are presentations, media interviews, message delivery and coaching executives. She has worked with health care organizations, law firms, consumer products companies, energy companies, government entities and a host of other individuals and businesses.
A native of Texas, Jean was formerly an executive vice president at GolinHarris, where she managed the San Francisco office and led the Corporate Practice as well as one of the agency’s largest clients, Kaiser Permanente. Prior to joining GolinHarris in 2005, she served as Vice President of Corporate Communications for Clear Channel Entertainment and oversaw a network of public relations leaders in the company’s six vertical lines of business. She joined Clear Channel Entertainment from her previous position as Vice President and Managing Director of the Houston office of Weber Shandwick where she led the corporate practice and business development of the agency. She has served on the boards of directors for both the Houston chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), where she held several committee chairmanships, and the Texas Public Relations Association, where she chaired the annual awards program for five years. She served for 3 years on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles chapter of PRSA, where she held the positions of secretary and president-elect. In addition, she has won numerous awards for excellence in the public relations field through the years and has spoken in a number of academic and professional forums, as well as authored articles, on crisis communications and issues management.