Mike McKenna serves as Senior Counsel to Widmeyer higher education clients and is a member of the firm’s Higher Education Advisory Panel. McKenna is an award winning creative director and copywriter, with a wide range of experience in corporate and higher education communications leadership positions.

After 30 years in his native Boston and Manhattan, McKenna followed a lifelong interest in higher education and joined Middlebury College as its first Vice President of Communications. McKenna spent four years at Middlebury and is now Managing Partner of James Farm Creative, a group of strategic communications advisors.

Prior to Middlebury, McKenna was president and chief creative officer of Marsteller, the corporate storytelling arm of Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm, where he provided integrated solutions to both private and public sector clients.

Among the highlights of his time in New York, McKenna created the first corporate social responsibility campaign for The Coca-Cola Company, which went on to earn numerous awards including a Telly. He also won a Telly for his documentary “The Game of Their Lives,” produced for The National Football Foundation. His work on “The New Color of Money,” a public service campaign introducing new $20 U.S. notes, was named 2004 interactive campaign of the year by Yahoo. And in 1999, The Arthur Page Society named his diversity work for Denny’s Restaurants the Public Relations Campaign of the Year.

McKenna holds a B.A. from Wesleyan and a M.S. in Journalism from Boston University where he was an Abbott Scholar. He and his wife Lynn live in Weybridge, Vermont and are the parents of two children and a Newfoundland named Otis.