Phyllis Blaunstein joined Widmeyer Communications in 1989 as senior counsel and serves as a lead strategist for the firm’s clients. Her more than 25 years focusing on education policy issues provides both private and public sector clients with the knowledge and expertise to build alliances with the education community. Major emphases of her work include social marketing and corporate branding, disseminating research and other findings, producing educational television programming, and developing productive relationships between clients and their markets.

She has worked with various clients in the public and private sectors including agencies such as the U.S. Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Behavior, Rockefeller Foundation, Coca-Cola, National Education Goals Panel, Primedia/Channel One, The College Board, National Skills Standards Board, Educational Communications, Wellesley College, and numerous others.

Prior to her work with Widmeyer Communications, Blaunstein was Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, and held positions in academia and the federal government. She is an expert on the relationship between federal and state education policy and regulations, and provides insight and strategies for clients to impact the state and federal policy process.

Blaunstein served as special assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Education Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, and participated in the drafting and passage of the regulations for the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Trained as an audiologist and speech pathologist, she taught medical and graduate students at the University of Tennessee and directed the University of Tennessee Research Hospital Speech and Hearing Clinic. She is currently co-authoring and editing a book on reading research for parents.

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