About the Authors
John Doorley
- Headed corporate communications at Merck, then the world’s largest and most admired health care company.
- Built and taught the world’s first undergraduate course in reputation management, at Rutgers University in 2003.
- Built and taught the world’s first graduate course in reputation management, at New York University in 2007.
- Copyrighted with the Library of Congress the “Comprehensive Reputation Management” process in 2003.
- Wrote with Fraser Seitel Rethinking Reputation, named (by ragan.com) the best public relations book of 2016.
- Coauthored the first book on reputation management, with Helio Fred Garcia in 2006, now in its fourth edition.
Doorley is now an associate professor of strategic communications at Elon University, ranked the nation’s number two university for undergraduate education in the annual reputation rankings by USA Today. He joined the faculty in the School of Communications at Elon University in 2015, after almost 10 years at New York University as founding academic director and clinical assistant professor of the Master of Science Degree Program in Public Relations & Corporate Communication. Under his leadership the NYU program became the world‘s largest graduate program in its field and the one named America’s Best Public Relations Education Program in 2009 and 2010. Before joining NYU he was a full-time faculty member in the School of Communication at Rutgers University.
Previously, until 2000, Doorley was head of corporate communication at Merck & Co. Inc., which was named America’s Most Admired Company 7 of his 12 years there (annual Fortune Magazine survey). Before joining Merck, he was a director of public relations and a speechwriter at Hoffmann-LaRoche Inc.
While at Merck, Doorley designed and directed reputation management initiatives that cultivated solid relationships with internal and external stakeholders, especially the press. He helped lead many policy initiatives for Merck and the healthcare industry, most notably in AIDS, healthcare reform and managed care, and directed the company’s communication programs for each of its business development initiatives, including acquisitions and joint ventures. Doorley wrote the proposal for the Merck Manual, Home Edition, the first edition of which sold two million copies. He won the Merck Chairman’s Award, the company’s coveted top honor for “ his outstanding contributions to the Inter-Company Collaboration for AIDS Drug Development.”
In 2009 he worked with the communication leadership at Johnson & Johnson to found the Academy for Communication Excellence & Leadership (ACCEL), one of industry‘s most successful career development initiatives for communicators. Doorley earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, and he completed the Harvard-Merck Executive Business Program. He has won numerous writing awards, and been recognized by the New Jersey Governor’s Office for his pro bono work with pediatric cancer patients. He and his wife, Carole, have two grown children, Nanci and Jonathan, and “a whole bunch” of beautiful, God-given granddaughters.
Helio Fred Garcia
For 40 years Helio Fred Garcia has helped leaders build trust, inspire loyalty and lead effectively. He is a coach, counselor, teacher, writer and speaker whose clients include some of the largest and best-known companies and organizations in the world. Garcia is the president of Logos Consulting Group and the executive director of The Logos Institute for Crisis Management & Executive Leadership.
Garcia has been on the New York University faculty since 1988. He is an adjunct professor of management in NYU’s Stern School of Business Executive MBA program, where he teaches crisis management and where he was named 2016 Executive MBA Great Professor. He is an adjunct associate professor of management and communication in NYU’s School of Professional Studies, MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program, where he has twice received the dean’s award for teaching excellence. In that program he teaches courses in communication strategy; in communication ethics, law and regulation; and in crisis communication.
Garcia is also an adjunct associate professor of professional development and leadership at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where he teaches leadership communication, ethics and crisis. For 20 years he has been a contract lecturer on leadership communication at Wharton/UPenn.
Garcia is also a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Corporate Communication at Communication University of China in Beijing. For eight years, until 2015, Garcia served on the leadership faculty of the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, where he taught an intensive seminar in the Master’s in Advanced Studies in Crisis Management and Security Policy. He has also served on the adjunct faculty of the Starr King School for the Ministry–Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where for six years he taught a seminar on religious leadership for social change.
In 2011 Garcia was designated an International Distinguished Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he gave a series of lectures and workshops on effective crisis response for graduate students and senior government, corporate and NGO leaders. In 2015 he conducted an extensive teaching and speaking tour of China, teaching in more than a dozen leading universities, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Nankai University, Communication University of China and Nanjing University, plus delivering keynotes at major corporate events.
In addition to working with Doorley on Reputation Management, Garcia is the author, most recently, of The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis (Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership Press, 2017). That book was named one of the Best Crisis Management Books of All Time (#2 of 51) by BookAuthority, the leading nonfiction recommendation site. It is available as a paperback, e-book and audiobook. He is also author of The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively (FT Press, 2012). That book was named to the United States Marine Corps Commandant’s Professional Reading List for 2013 to 2018. A Chinese language edition of The Power of Communication was published jointly in 2014 by Pearson Education Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong and by Publishing House of Electronics Industry in Beijing. His two-volume book Crisis Communications was published by AAAA Publications in 1999.
Garcia is accredited by the Public Relations Society of America, and received the society’s New York Chapter’s Philip Dorf Award for mentoring.
Garcia has an MA in philosophy from Columbia University and two graduate certificates in classical Greek language and literature from the Latin/Greek Institute of the City University of New York Graduate Center. He has a BA with honors in politics and philosophy from New York University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Mount Saint Mary College. He can be reached at [email protected].