Widmeyer Communications’ Higher Education Advisory Panel includes national leaders, top academics and policy experts with experience in financial aid, admissions, crisis management, diversity, presidential leadership and development. Panel members serve as senior counsel to the firm’s growing roster of higher education clients. The panel also works closely with firm leadership and serves as a sounding board on evolving trends shaping the face of higher education in the 21^st century. The panel includes:

• John Burness, interim President of Franklin & Marshall College, on leave from his position as Visiting Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy of Duke’s Terry Sanford School of Public Policy and former senior communications officer for Duke University.
• Dr. Robert Dickeson, former senior vice president for policy and organizational learning at Lumina Foundation, former president of the University of Northern Colorado and former senior policy adviser to the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
• Edward Fiske, former New York Times education editor and author of The Fiske Guide to Colleges.
• Mike McKenna, Managing Partner of James Farm Creative, former vice president of  communications at Middlebury College.
  
• Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce, President Emerita of the University of Puget Sound.
• Dr. Martha Romero, Founding Director of the Community College Leadership Development Initiatives at Claremont Graduate University and former president of a community college in California.
• Jose Antonio Tijerino, President and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.
• Deborah Wadsworth, former executive director and president of Public Agenda, current member of the Board of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and chair of the Board of Trustees at Bennington College.
• Dr. Michael J. Worth, Professor of Nonprofit Management in the School of Public Policy and Public Administration, former vice president for Development and Alumni Affairs at The George Washington University.
• Dr. Diana Knott Martinelli, the first Widmeyer Communications Professor in Public Relations at West Virginia University and former faculty member at Ohio University.