We’re pleased to present our latest featured profile, designed to introduce you to our member consultants, advisors, executive coaches, clients, partners and other extraordinary people. These profiles go beyond the professional bio to provide a more personal glimpse and offer an opportunity for us to get to know each other better as people as we strive to create connections and build community. This month we’re pleased to feature Consultants Collective member consultant, John Clemons.
Q: Who are your heroes?
My heroes from the past and present who inspire me are Nelson Mandela, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Rosa Parks, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King and John Legend.
Q: Who is your favorite artist?
My favorite painter is Vincent Van Gogh. He was a brilliant and tortured artist who tried different painting and creative styles. He was adventurous with color and brush strokes and produced so many fascinating, beautiful and contemplative works of art; all this and a rough life that ended tragically, before he received recognition and international acclaim.
Q: What is one of your hobbies?
I love photography, particularly black and white images. I bought a new 35 mm camera two years ago and took a lesson. I just need to get out and snap away more than I have had time for in recent months.
Q: What is the last book read?
Author Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys was the last book that I read. It is intense historical fiction based on a boys reform school in Florida. The school has been closed for years but the treatment of these young male characters by sadistic guards and others still lingers in my mind. Great, tight writing and storytelling in a relatively small book.
Q: Why do you do what you do?
I love communications in all of its forms – employee communications, marketing, speechwriting, storytelling. Clearly, there is strategy involved but, for me, it’s also about opening the aperture and seeing what is possible to resolve business problems, challenges and issues. Developing solutions that can really make a difference in an organization or business’s operations and credibility with its key stakeholders is powerful and gratifying.
Q: What is your favorite quote?
Let go and let God.
Q: What is your latest accomplishment?
I am really pleased with my success at teaching PR and communications at two universities this spring, the University of North Carolina Charlotte and Loyola University New Orleans. It has always been a professional goal to teach and give back to the profession by educating young minds. Coupled with that is inclusion in fellow Consultant Collective member Mark Dollins’s new book on employee communications which will be published in the fall. All of this is exciting and professionally fulfilling.
Q: What would you say is your chief characteristic?
A chief characteristic would probably be my ability to actively listen to what is said – and not said by clients and others, plus my calm demeanor when partnering with others.
Q; What makes you happy?
I am happiest when traveling and discovering the new. Also, creating awesome memories with good friends, while enjoying great food, music and wine.
