B.J. Parker, CEO, knows image building. She should—she spent 14 years in the broadcasting industry with ABC Radio Network Sales (a division of Walt Disney Corporation), where she mastered the essentials of public presentation as Midwest sales office manager and public relations coordinator.

She started her own enterprise, Public Image Relations, Inc., in 1995 after perfecting her passionate vision of a firm that customizes strategies and solutions for each business’s image challenges.

Personable, creative, disciplined and resourceful, B.J. bores into the core of a business to help it reach its full potential from the inside out.

B.J. first meets and corresponds intensively with management to identify why public image training, coaching and/or consulting may be necessary. She then performs a thorough needs assessment that details image strengths and weaknesses.

After the assessment, B.J. coaches the client on how the marketplace is receiving and interpreting the client’s brand. Next, she helps build the brand and promote it through the appropriate public information system. B.J. also prepares and provides strategies, workshops, materials, and evaluations specific to the image-building mission. She follows up regularly to monitor satisfactory results.

Businesses and individuals alike have improved their public images—and subsequently become more successful—through B.J.’s hands-on coaching.

Most recently, she created and led “Any Thursday,” a six-part interactive workshop for small businesses with limited public presence. All participants returned to their marketplaces with the know-how they needed for enhancing their images and building buzz for their products and services.

B.J. has also shared her public relations and image expertise on national and local media programs and as a columnist for SalonSense magazine, a beauty industry trade publication.

She has been equally proficient in helping people generate excitement and opportunities for themselves. Four hundred workers were hired because of her leadership as project manager for the Chicago Hospitality Consortium; their employment retention rate was an astonishing 84% (the industry norm was 47%).

She also empowered 300 people to find work through a successful social experiment organized by the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development for SafeWay, a national chain of food stores. In addition, Ameritech hired B.J. to perform its diversity training because it required an expert to develop the right cultural image with new the parent company, SBC.

Her image-enhancing topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Any Thursday PR Series: Creativity and problem-solving
• Pt. 1 - Do I Need Public Relations? Self-esteem reinforcement
• Poise at meetings and during interviews Diversity and sexual harassment awareness
• Written and oral communication skills Overcoming negativity
• Social etiquette Personal organization
• Time management Self Efficacy
• Professional Attire
• Creativity and problem-solving
• Self-esteem reinforcement
• Diversity and sexual harassment awareness
• Overcoming negativity
• Personal organization
• Self Efficacy
  

B.J. studied marketing communications with a concentration in public relations at Columbia College in Chicago. She received her B.A. degree from Northeastern Illinois University, where she majored in human resource development. She also has a Certificate of Entrepreneurship Development from the University of Illinois and is an MBE/WBE with the City of Chicago.

PHILANTHROPY

As part of Public Image Relations, Inc.'s commitment to helping as many persons as possible strengthen their self esteem and empower themselves, B.J. is a part of the following organizations:

• The Living Breast Calendar Project
• Sandy Elbaum - Refugee Organization

Contact B.J. to find out more about her experiences, affiliations and past PR solutions. Most important, discover how she can help your business’s image become a magnet for paying customers, because remember—image is everything!