Ben Wheatley, ABC, APR, Senior Vice President

Ben Wheatley, ABC, APR, senior vice president, has more than 30 years of public relations and communication experience but very little gray hair!  He attributes the latter to good genes and the former to luck, a little ingenuity and a lot of staying power.  Since joining Pierpont in 1999, Ben has led teams for the Houston Rockets, Shell Oil, Penreco, Save-A-Lot groceries, Stewart & Stevenson, Camden Properties, Wärtsilä, Genentech, JE Dunn Construction, Suez Energy Resources and more.

Before Pierpont, Ben was an independent public relations practitioner in Houston for more than eight years.  During that time, he took on employee communications, media relations and marketing communication assignments for clients in health care, real estate, construction and oil & gas.

Ben's first agency experience was with Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations in Houston, where he served as an account supervisor.  He's also worked on the corporate side, having handled employee communication posts at Conoco Chemicals and Zapata Corporation in Houston and at Harris Hospital-Methodist in Fort Worth.

In his first communication job, Ben pounded the pavement and manual typewriter keys as reporter and photographer for a small daily newspaper in Kansas.  Although no Pulitzer is on his mantle, Ben has won numerous other awards for communication projects.  In 1992, he was named the IABC Communicator of the Year.  He is also one of the few national communicators to earn dual professional accreditation - he is both an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) with IABC and Accredited in Public Relations (APR) by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).  Further, he is a member of PRSA's Counselors Academy, a national network of senior-level communicators who share knowledge and keep up with trends in public relations.

Throughout his career, Ben has held numerous volunteer posts in both IABC/Houston and PRSA Houston.  He is also the only Houston communicator who has served as president of both organizations, IABC in 1981 and PRSA Houston in 2001.  Currently, Ben serves on the board of IABC as programming chair.  He has earned both bachelor’s and master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Kansas State University.

To contact Ben, click here.