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Barbara Puffer MA, ABC
Past Region Director

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Barbara Puffer MA, ABC, calls herself a “recycled” IABC leader, as she served as director of the former U.S. District 1 in the ‘80s and served on the IABC Executive Board as a director-at-large.  She’s done many things in IABC from two-term chapter president, to Gold Quill (Division coordinator four times and Blue Ribbon Panel Judge), to Accreditation (the Board, examiner, portfolio reviewer, mentor), to EXCEL (committee chair), and onto the Research Foundation Chairman.

 She has worked nearly 35 years in corporate and organizational communications management -- primarily as a corporate communications manager but since 1998 as a consultant. She is also Associate Professor for the University of Maryland University College on-line, teaching in the undergraduate Communications Studies program and for the Graduate School of Management and Technology.

Her work has spanned internal and external communications, public relations, public affairs, community relations, and advertising for financial institutions, a Fortune 500 corporation, health care, and telecommunications. She has served in the leadership in many large non-profit organizations and in political positions. Among those of which she is most proud, was her chairmanship of the IABC Research Foundation and serving as the first president of the Board of American School for the Deaf (185 years old). Her undergraduate degree is in journalism and early study and work centered on the media. She holds an MA in corporate and political communications, earned her ABC in 1979, was named Lifetime IABC Research Foundation Friend, and received IABC’s Chairman’s Award. She has won more than 100 awards for her work with publications, communications programs, media relations, video, audio, special publications, community relations, exhibits, and non-profit leadership.

Barbara married her husband, Tom, after an IABC Conference and her last IEB meeting in 1990, in Vancouver, B. C.  They maintain homes in Connecticut and Southwest Florida and she works from anywhere and everywhere!