The College of Charleston’s Department of Communication will honor retired Corporate Vice President of Johnson & Johnson, Willard D. “Bill” Nielsen, with its “Distinguished Communicator” award. Nielsen will deliver his lecture titled, “Recovering the Public Trust—The Essential Role of Public Relations” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 24 in the Stern Student Center Ballroom.
Nielsen currently serves as a consultant to management of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He specializes in corporate communications, public relations, public affairs, corporate coaching and organizational vision and values, drawing on experience gained over 30 years in both industry and agency settings.
He retired as Corporate Vice President of Johnson & Johnson in December 2004, after serving 17 years with the Company. As an officer of the Corporation reporting to its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nielsen was the chief corporate communications officer for the widely diversified and decentralized group of over two hundred operating companies in fifty seven countries in the fields of pharmaceuticals and biotech, medical devices and diagnostics and consumer products.
Mr. Nielsen’s professional accomplishments include leadership of an eight-year public relations and advertising education program for the pharmaceutical industry, and a nationwide child injury prevention campaign, the National SAFE KIDS Campaign. This 20-year campaign is credited with helping to reduce the annual rate of unintended injury and death among children by more than 30 percent. Programs he supervised won four PRSA Silver Anvils.
Mr. Nielsen continues to be active in the leadership of PR professional organizations. He served two terms as president of the Arthur W. Page Society and was inducted into that organization’s Hall of Fame in September 2003 and continues on the Society’s board of trustees. He is a past chairman of The Seminar, an annual meeting of the communication profession’s top executives. He also chaired the board of the Institute for Public Relations and continues as an emeritus director, and served on the Board of Directors of the Global Public Affairs Institute. He is a member of The Wisemen and the Public Relations Society of America. He is also a Trustee of the Josephson Institute of Ethics.
“Bill Nielsen has had a spectacular career, and he has devoted himself to elevating his profession,” said Brian McGee, chair of the Department of Communication. “He is richly deserving of this award.”
Nielsen will be the eighth honoree of the Communication Department’s Distinguished Communicator award. Other winners include author and satirist Christopher Buckley; Marilyn Laurie, retired global head of communications for AT&T; syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker; Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Smith; U.S. Sen. “Fritz” Hollings; Nickelodeon television executive Marva Smalls; and former NBC News White House correspondent John Palmer.
With one of the largest undergraduate majors at the College of Charleston, the Department of Communication enrolls more than 800 students in its undergraduate and graduate programs. Students in the department study such topics as political communication, interpersonal communication, journalism, and public relations. The department is housed in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
