Lumina Communications - Hugh Burnham

LIANA HAWES

VICE PRESIDENT
A skilled public relations practitioner and experienced publicist, Liana drives media relations strategy with national business and vertical outlets.

She develops creative approaches for positioning news, features and executives with the goal of increasing business value and awareness through media coverage and relationship building. Liana has worked with many hard-to-get top-tier journalists and publications. She applies a tactical approach to insular trade, social and niche media as well as with industry analysts to garner placements and recognition for companies, products and people. Liana has more than 10 years of experience working with companies and non-profit organizations in the technology, telecom and media industries.

Prior to Lumina, Liana was senior associate with October Strategies, Inc. specializing in cable and telecommunications for such clients as J:COM and Liberty Global, Inc. Before that, she was a consultant to MasterCard International with responsibility for the executive speakers’ bureau and weekly commentaries. In 2001, she was instrumental in the launch of SureScripts, the largest network to link electronic communications between pharmacies and physicians. From 1998-2001, Liana was national media manager at Phase Two Strategies, serving as a central resource for media strategies across agency flagship accounts Stanford Research Institute, Logitech and LEGO Robotics. As a contractor to leading agencies including Weber Shandwick, Edelman and Manning Selvage & Lee, Liana handled business and consumer publicity for AT&T Labs and Archives, Sharp Electronics, IBM Global Services, Yamaha Music and i-Village.com amongst others.

Liana has held production and corporate communications positions at Nickelodeon; Nick at Nite; the MTV Networks Diversity Initiative and Viacom Interactive. She did her graduate work in Media Ecology at New York University School of Education under the direction of Neil Postman and she is an alumnus of Emerson College in Boston with a concentration in Communications Studies and Public Relations. She served on the Board of Directors for the Camden, Maine non-profit, Platform Shoes which provides programming that inspires girls to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New York Arabic Orchestra.