Jessie Dorin Harmes
Affiliate Consultant
Areas of Expertise
Jessie Dorin Harmes has been a professional communicator with leading global companies for more than 20 years. Areas of expertise include: mergers, acquisitions and restructuring; financial communications, nutrition communications; product publicity; directing highly engaging management meetings; corporate social responsibility and developing corporate intranet sites. Throughout her career she has worked with senior executives to clearly communicate business priorities and organizational initiatives to internal and external stakeholders. She is an experienced writer and editor.
Corporate and Consulting Experience
Jessie’s corporate career began at Bestfoods (since acquired by Unilever) where she managed communications for many of America’s iconic food brands. She worked closely with food scientists, nutritionists and celebrity chefs to positively position the company’s product portfolio. She then moved to KPMG, managing external communications for the firm’s Consumer Markets division and was tasked with promoting the practice partners as thought leaders in the food and retail sectors. As Director of Global Internal Communications for the Gerber Products Company (then a Division of Novartis Pharmaceuticals) she developed strategies and managed campaigns to ensure the worldwide organization of 5,000 employees was briefed and aligned on business priorities and accomplishments. She worked directly with the CEO and senior leaders to rally employees around a new strategic goal for the company – the prevention of childhood obesity — and was responsible for communicating a revitalized Gerber mission to all global markets. Upon the $5.5 billion sale of Gerber to the Nestle company, Jessie partnered with senior management to ensure a positive workplace transition for employees. She led a complex 18-month change management initiative to support the evolving organization, which included preparing monthly business updates from the CEO; conducting town hall meetings and working with HR to gauge workplace satisfaction through surveys and focus groups. She most recently served as a Change Management Consultant at Montclair State University (New Jersey’s second largest public university), and developed a strategic communications plan to support the faculty, staff and students through a multimillion dollar ERP implementation.
