Contributing Authors:
Colburn Aker, Managing Partner
Colburn founded the nation’s only partner-directed communications and marketing firm in 1983. With a career spanning more than three decades, he is now recognized as one of the nation’s most experienced public relations counselors. Unique strategies, creative ideas, and extraordinary results are hallmarks of his work for more than 500 clients. As a sign of the respect he enjoys among his peers, in 2003, he was elected president of the Public Relations Global Network, Inc., an invitation only network of leading independent agencies with more than 50 offices worldwide. The Aker Partners serves as the Washington office. Aker has provided counsel to political and business leaders since graduating with a Juris Doctorate from The Ohio State University in 1968. After serving as a Captain and Judge Advocate in the Air Force, he began a private law practice before joining a Presidential campaign. He also was a top advisor to U.S. Senator John Culver and managed his successful statewide Senate campaign. In 1977, Aker became the first full-time lobbyist for the corporate clients of Hill and Knowlton, and later became the number two person in the office, until his departure in 1983. Admitted to practice law in three jurisdictions, he was a partner in his own law firm before leaving to devote full-time to public relations.
He has represented more than 500 clients, including Accenture, BP, DuPont, Ford Motor, Gateway, Honeywell, Mazda, Monsanto, Moore Medical, Newspaper Association, Revlon, Rolls-Royce, U.S. Mint, U.S. Olympic Committee, and more than 100 industry associations.
Dave Narsavage, Senior Partner
Dave offers extensive experience as a journalist, U.S. Senate Press Secretary, public relations agency principal, independent consultant, and corporate executive. Prior to joining The Aker Partners, he served as the corporate Director of Employee Communications for Amtrak, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and now leads the firm’s TeamCom21 employee communications practice. It’s all been part of Narsavage’s 30-plus years of professional communications experience. A journalism graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications, he served in Vietnam as an Army combat correspondent and photographer before becoming a daily newspaper reporter and feature writer in New England. Then, more than 25 years ago, he came to Washington as the late Sen. John H. Chafee’s first Press Secretary.
Sanda Pecina, Partner & Media Relations Director
As a former television anchor and reporter in three media markets, Sanda provides clients with inside knowledge of media. She also offers them guidance based on public relations and legislative experience gained from several government and private sector organizations. As a Partner and Media Relations Director, Pecina directs client media relations, media training, account management and event planning activities for a number of clients, especially those in the health care sector. Pecina first entered public relations as an account assistant for Holman Communications, where she took part in media relations and event planning for several years. Pursuing an interest in politics, in the early 1990s Pecina moved to Capitol Hill, where she served as a legislative staff member for Senator Bob Kasten (R-WI), and then Rep. Toby Roth (R-WI). In the mid-’90s, she was recruited by the National Federation of Croatian Americans (NFCA) and became its National Coordinator. In this role she handled media relations, lobbied Congress, and helped build a nationwide database of Croatian Americans. Pecina left the NFCA to obtain a Master’s Degree in Communication/Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. After earning her degree, she worked as a reporter for Bay News 9 (Tampa, FL), anchor/reporter for KVII Pro-News 7 (Amarillo, TX) and a Producer for KVUE 24 (Austin, TX). She was responsible for writing, research, communication and constituency-building within various sectors of the station’s community. In addition to her Master’s Degree, Pecina has a Bachelor’s Degree in both Comparative Politics and Art History from Georgetown University. She speaks Spanish, French, Russian, Croatian and Serbian.
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