Our Team

Peter Verrengia – President & Senior Partner

Peter serves as President and Senior Partner of Communications Consulting Worldwide, the multidisciplinary global consulting business within Fleishman-Hillard. He is also a member of Fleishman-Hillard's Office of the Chairman.

He co founded CCW in 2004 to answer client's questions about the value created by corporate communications and marketing communications and to identify better ways to address the risks and opportunities that all organizations face in managing their corporate reputations. CCW's approach was developed through a two-year investment by Fleishman-Hillard, with guidance from a leading professor at a top-ranked business school and experts in statistical modeling and intangibles valuation.

During his 20 years with Fleishman Hillard, much of his work has focused on the communications priorities of senior management teams that need to explain how their communications strategies and actions create brand value and shareholder value. Throughout his 30-year career as a communications consultant, Mr. Verrengia has been extensively involved in improving the public perception of corporate performance in organizations that are misunderstood or less well-known than their business plans require. He also counsels leaders of visible organizations on reputation management when they face significant organizational changes, new competitive threats, crises, or transactions.

For clients ranging from global Fortune 50 enterprises to startups, professional services firms and not-for-profit organizations, Mr. Verrengia consults on corporate and financial communications, positioning and message development, crisis communications, litigation support, and issues programs. His experience includes work with management teams and communications leaders at Ernst & Young, Visa, SK Group, DuPont, Abbott Laboratories, and Putnam Investments. He led the worldwide Fleishman-Hillard team that supported ExxonMobil in its merger communications and provided communications advice to both sides of the JPMorgan Chase combination.

Prior to leading the firm's global consulting business, he was regional president for the firm's Eastern region, including its New York and Boston offices, from 2001 through 2006, and previously was general manager of the New York office, and head of its management communications and financial communications group. From 1985 through April 1987, Mr. Verrengia was a vice president in the special situations group at Hill & Knowlton, providing communications counseling in mergers, acquisitions, and corporate crises. During 1983 and 1984, he was with Peat Marwick (now KPMG) as supervisor of specialized industries communications. Mr. Verrengia initially joined Hill & Knowlton's financial relations division in 1978 after attending the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Professor Paul A. Argenti – Chief Adviser

Professor Paul A. Argenti is a co-founder and serves as the chief adviser for CCW. He has taught management and corporate communication starting in 1977 at the Harvard Business School, from 1979 – 81 at the Columbia Business School and since 1981 as a faculty member at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the International University of Japan, the Helsinki School of Economics, Erasmus University in the Netherlands, Rai University in India, and Singapore Management University. He currently serves as Faculty Director for the Tuck Leadership Forum. He has also served as faculty director for the Tuck Executive Program (TEP), Update 2000, and for Tuck's senior executive program at the Hanoi School of Business in Vietnam.

Over the past 25 years Professor Argenti has provided management, leadership, and corporate communication consulting and training for more than 100 corporations and nonprofit organizations in both the United States and abroad. He also consults and speaks about issues of corporate reputation and social responsibility. His clients cover a broad range including Goldman Sachs, Sony, Nokia, and General Electric.

His most recent books include: (co-authored with UCLA's Janis Forman) The Power of Corporate Communication, which was published by McGraw-Hill, and The Fast Forward MBA Pocket Reference (second edition), which was released through Wiley. He also published a fourth edition of his textbook through McGraw-Hill/Irwin in 2006 entitled Corporate Communication. Professor Argenti is also the editor of The Portable MBA Desk Reference, a best seller, which was published through Wiley. He has written more than 75 case studies and is the author of various articles for both academic and managerial journals such as the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Leader to Leader, and California Management Review. Professor Argenti currently serves as associate editor for both the Journal of Business Communication and Corporate Reputation Review.

Both The Wall Street Journal and US News & World Report have rated Tuck's focus on communication No. 1 in the nation. Professor Argenti received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1987 to study in England. He also received an undergraduate degree from Columbia College (in 1975) and graduate degrees from Brandeis (in 1979) and Columbia (in 1981) Universities.

Dr. Pamela Cohen, Ph.D. – Partner

Dr. Cohen, a behaviorist and expert in performance measurement and management, specializing in intangible valuation in complex business environments. She is a Partner and Co-Founder of Communications Consulting Worldwide (CCW) and of Predictiv, LLC, consulting firms that design unique causal measurement models linking intangibles to financial performance for organizations and their business units. Her work is done through unique qualitative and quantitative research design and analysis. Dr. Cohen's consulting work and research focuses on behavioral economics, and in particular, intangible valuation, developing causal business models, maximizing the utility of human capital, and integrated decision support systems. The results from her research and modeling work are used to develop action plans for organizational improvement initiatives. She began her relationship with CCW when Predictiv was retained by Fleishman-Hillard Inc. of the Omnicom Group, to advise on the approach used by CCW to provide measurement and management solutions to the communications industry.

Under the auspices of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation she led research focused on the valuation of intangible assets through quantitative as well as qualitative means, including intellectual and human capital, organizational transitions, innovation, alliances and other sources of growth. She also led the CBI's research on emotions in organizations. Dr. Cohen directed Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's intangibles practice and service offering worldwide.

In consulting with the service- and manufacturing sectors, both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies, Pam uses a wide array of social- psychological, qualitative, and quantitative techniques. She has served a wide range of companies including clients in the hotel and entertainment industries, commercial and private lending institutions, equity financing, various leasing businesses, mortgage loans, credit cards, airlines, cellular phones, yellow pages, and manufacturing businesses.

Her publications include work on patterns of attitudinal and perceptual change in various social groups. She has also developed and delivered frequent seminars and lectures on adding rigor and reducing bias in qualitative and quantitative research analysis. Her book on intangible valuation called "Invisible Advantage: How Intangibles Are Driving Business Performance" was published by Perseus Press in May, 2002, along with co-author Jonathan Low and has been translated into many foreign language editions. A new book co-authored by Cohen called "Business Power: Creating New Wealth from IP Assets" was released in April, 2007.

Along with many published articles on the topic, her speaking engagements have included ABC World News, Forbes, CNNfn, Money Matters, the New York Times, CFO Magazine, and a variety of specialty and government organizations, radio and television programs.

Prior to Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Dr. Cohen was a partner with the consulting firms Sibson & Company and, earlier, CFI Group, specializing in customer satisfaction measurement. She has taught courses in the psychology and sociology departments of the University of Michigan. Prior to that she was a consultant for the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center.

Pam has a Ph.D. in Sociology, with a specializing in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan, as well as master's degrees in Sociology and also Higher and Adult Continuing Education from the University of Michigan. Her bachelor's degree in Sociology is from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society for Consumer Psychology, EMONET (studying emotions in the workplace), American Sociological Association, and the International Communication Association.

Jonathan Low – Consultant

Jon Low is a Partner and co-founder of Predictiv, LLC and serves as a consultant to CCW. His specialty is management performance and organizational effectiveness, primarily the valuation of intangibles such as strategy execution, communications, brand, innovation, reputation, and organizational transition. He works with clients in business, government, and the not-for-profit sector in the U.S. and Europe.

Before founding Predictiv, Mr. Low was a senior fellow at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation. Under his leadership, CGEY produced four major reports on the growing role of intangibles in the global economy. The major studies include Measures That Matter, Success Factors in the IPO Transformation Process, Decisions That Matter and The Value Creation Index. Jon has also organized and co-hosted with Forbes ASAP an annual conference entitled Measuring The Future. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and other publications. He has been a guest on ABC-TV, CBS, CNBC, CNNfn, National Public Radio, and other electronic media. He is the co-editor of Enterprise Value in the Knowledge Economy, co-published by the OECD and Ernst & Young in 1997. He is co-author of Invisible Advantage, published by Perseus Press in 2002.

Mr. Low has served in a number of positions related to his work on the valuation of intangibles. These positions include co-chair for Strategic and Organizational Issues of The Brookings Institution's Task Force on Understanding Intangible Sources of Value. He has been invited to present his findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board, the European Commission, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

For most of his professional career, Mr. Low has assisted underperforming businesses, working first as a manager and as an adviser to organizations facing such issues. Before affiliating with the CGEY, Mr. Low took a leave of absence from his position with the investment firm High Street Associates to serve as deputy assistant secretary (acting) for Work and Technology Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor. In that capacity, Jon served on the SEC Steering Committee on the Future of Accounting and Financial Reporting, The Conference Board Working Group on Corporate Performance Measures, and was the U.S. representative to the inaugural OECD Conference on Corporate Governance.

Mr. Low serves as a director of Surface Coatings, Inc., on the Board of Advisors of the Principal Financial Group's IP Innovations Financial Services Inc., on the Board of Advisors of Earth-Jet Inc., on the Board of Visitors of Dartmouth College's Center for International Understanding, a director of the Athena Alliance, and a fellow of the National IP Task Force. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale University's School of Management.

Franz W. Paasche – Partner

Franz Paasche joined CCW as a partner in 2007. He leads CCW's leadership communications practice and provides counsel to clients on reputation management, strategic leadership communications, message development, corporate strategy, litigation support, and crisis management.

Mr. Paasche came to CCW with 20 years of experience in law, communications, and corporate strategy. Prior to joining CCW, Mr. Paasche served as a managing director of Clark & Weinstock, where he advised clients on a wide range of external and internal strategic communications challenges, including crisis situations, leadership communications, major transactions and initiatives, restructurings, investigations, and litigations.

From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Paasche served as general counsel and executive vice-president of Market Data Corporation, a real-time financial information company. While at Market Data, he was responsible for managing communications, litigation, corporate, contract, intellectual property, and employment matters, as well as the company's charitable activities.

From 1987 to 1994, Mr. Paasche was a litigator at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, where he represented public and private entities and individuals on a broad range of litigation and corporate matters. His practice included complex commercial litigation involving securities, contract, real estate, election law and regulatory issues.

Before beginning his legal career, Mr. Paasche served on the legislative staff of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where he specialized in foreign policy and national security matters.

Mr. Paasche graduated with High Honors from Swarthmore College in 1983, and received his law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1987. He is a member of the New York Bar.

Mr. Paasche is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of The Putney School, Putney Vermont, and serves as the Co-President of the Riverdale Nature Preservancy in the West Bronx.

Suzanne Klotz – Senior Vice President, Director of Client Services

Suzanne Klotz joined CCW in 2005, with over ten years experience in communications and marketing. In her current role as director of client services, Ms. Klotz focuses on new business development, as well as managing reputation and communications value measurement consulting engagements.

Prior to joining CCW, Ms. Klotz was a corporate communications and reputation management research associate, working with Professor Paul A. Argenti from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Her work with Professor Argenti included research on communications integration and corporate reputation, as well as assisting with the development of several published case studies. Primary research conducted with Professor Argenti focused on a number of major corporations, including Coca-Cola, The New York Times Company, FedEx, and AARP.

Before working with Professor Argenti, Ms. Klotz was associate director at Gavin Anderson & Company. In this position Ms. Klotz provided clients, primarily in the financial and professional services industries, with strategic reputation management and corporate communications counsel, as well as program planning and execution. While at Gavin Anderson, Ms. Klotz also worked with the crisis communications management practice where she provided focused background research, specializing in corporate and financial research, to mitigate losses surrounding bankruptcies and restructurings, litigation, management change, and fraud.

Throughout her career Ms. Klotz has consulted with an array of organizations including SK Group, AT&T, UPS, Visa, PricewaterhouseCoopers, New York Life, and Standard & Poor's.

Prior to transitioning to her marketing and communications management career, which also included brand management experience at Schering-Plough Healthcare Products, Ms. Klotz was a vice president at the brokerage and mutual fund company, Bull & Bear Securities. In this position Ms. Klotz oversaw broker practices on the retail trading desk, as well as the new accounts department.

Ms. Klotz received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Connecticut College. While at the Tuck School of Business, Ms. Klotz was the recipient of the Dero Saunders Award, which recognizes excellence in managerial communications. Ms. Klotz is a member of the Tuck Today Advisory Board at the Tuck School of Business.

Douglas Costle - Senior Vice President

Doug Costle is a senior vice president at Communications Consulting Worldwide (CCW), the multidisciplinary global consulting business within Fleishman-Hillard. He joined CCW in 2007 and consults with clients on corporate and marketing communications, message development, performance measurement, and the role of digital communications in managing corporate reputation.

Mr. Costle has more than a decade of experience helping clients use communications to achieve business objectives. He has consulted with companies of all sizes—from startups to established industry leaders—including Cisco Systems, Genentech, IBM, and Sprint-Nextel. Mr. Costle joined CCW after managing the digital marketing and communications practice for Fleishman-Hillard’s California operations.

Before joining Fleishman-Hillard, Mr. Costle led Context Analytics, a media research and analytics consulting firm based in San Francisco and Mumbai, India. At Context Analytics, he advised clients on a range of communications and business challenges, including performance measurement, financial communications, crisis management, message development and optimization, communications risk, and organizational change.

Recognizing the growing influence of digital media on corporate reputation and consumer purchasing decisions, Mr. Costle established a digital media practice at Context Analytics responsible for measuring and managing digital media and communications for its clients.

Previously, Mr. Costle managed analytics-based communications and performance measurement programs for several companies. At Applied Communications, he was responsible for advising clients on competitive and corporate communications, performance management and the integration of communications in go-to-market strategies. He also developed and led the Opposition Research (OR) practice, which combined innovative competitive intelligence techniques with statistical modeling to deliver predictive intelligence of the competitive environment for clients such as HP and Sun Microsystems.

Before entering the field of marketing communications, Mr. Costle worked for Dresdner RCM Global Investors, an institutional money management firm, in its consultant relations group. Mr. Costle began his career in politics, holding several communications, research and field roles on state and national campaigns. Mr. Costle holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and political science from the University of Vermont.

Jonathan Struthers – Vice President

Jonathan Struthers joined CCW in 2007 as a Vice President and works primarily in the firm’s leadership communications and crisis response integration practice. Jonathan comes to CCW with fifteen years experience in strategic communications, marketing, brand development and business.

Most recently, Mr. Struthers worked as VP of Marketing & Communications for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation where he was responsible for creating and managing the strategic direction for the Foundation’s communications and marketing initiatives, and developing partnerships with companies including McDonald’s, H &R Block, The History Channel, Phaidon Press, among others.

Previously, Mr. Struthers headed communications for the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI), a public health initiative principally funded by Pfizer and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to eliminate trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. He led internal and external communications at ITI, including working in conjunction with Pfizer’s corporate affairs department to publicize the company’s donation of the antibiotic Zithromax in the treatment of trachoma in Africa and Asia.

Mr. Struthers also served as a Strategic Analyst in the interactive department of the brand strategy firm, Siegel & Gale, and led product marketing for a software start up whose clients included New Line Cinema and Calence/Cisco Systems, and as the Senior Project Manager of Acoustiguide Corporation, working with clients ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Elvis Presley’s Graceland.

Mr. Struthers graduated with his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He received his B.A. from Brown University where he graduated magna cum laude.

Sharon Siegel – Vice President

Sharon Siegel, M.D., is a board certified diagnostic radiologist with professional creative expertise that transforms technical, medical, pharmaceutical, and health knowledge into consumer-enabling information. After more than a decade in clinical practice, Dr. Siegel turned her professional focus to medical- technical writing and data analysis.

Dr. Siegel writes reports and technical documents, translating professional and arcane language into consumer-friendly reports and presentations. Her works include foundational analysis and presentations for pharmaceutical, healthcare, specialty, and industry groups on a broad range of technical subjects.

Dr. Siegel's professional and personal subject matter interests include women's health, preventive medicine, mental and behavioral health, nutrition science, and sports medicine. Her work with the media began as a high school student when she served as the chief writer for a popular morning radio program in the Detroit Metropolitan area. In addition to publishing her own work, Dr. Siegel has also served as a professional copywriter and proofreader for other physicians publishing their works.

Dr. Siegel is a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.S. degree in biomedical science) and the University of Michigan Medical School.

Tom Buzas – Consultant

Tom Buzas has been consulting in the areas of business modeling and survey construction for 15 years and serves as a consultant to CCW. His professional focus has been on constructing models linking measures of Leadership, Employee Culture, Customer Service, and Processes with customer metrics, and financial performance, including profit and productivity. He has constructed such models for major companies in the retailing, automotive, financial, business service, hospitality, restaurant, utility, and telecommunications industries. Mr. Buzas received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in business administration in 1983 and his B.S. in psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1973. He was assistant professor at the University of Florida from 1983-1989 and associate professor at Eastern Michigan from 1989-1993. He was director of research at the CFI Group from 1992-1996 and a director of Knowledge Stream Partners 1996-1997. He started his own company in 1997 and co-founded Alliance Maps LLC in 2002.

Mr. Buzas has published articles in Biometrika, Marketing Research and Management Science. His analytical work was featured in the "Employee-Service Profit Chain at Sears," in the January 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review written by Rick Quinn. One of his clients, GTE Directories Corporation, received a Baldridge Award in 1994. He has spoken at numerous conferences and workshops over the last several years. Recently Forbes featured his work in brand valuation in "Power Brands," April 18, 2004.