people
Scott Tillitt is founder and principal consultant/writer. The Collective also includes an immediate family of experienced collaborators and, indirectly, a constantly expanding universe of professional and social communities: marketing and PR professionals, writers and editors, grassroots groups, nonprofit professionals, artists and creatives, activists, hipsters and culture shapers.
 Photo: Dan Fiege |
Part publicist, part marketer, part writer, above all a socially conscious communicator, Scott has 13 years of experience promoting ideas, products, and services in various culture-shaping (and sometimes suffocating) domains — advertising, media, interactive design, photography, technology, television, and fashion.
He has extensive experience in: communications planning; media relations/external affairs; PR, marketing, and magazine writing; marketing communications; branding and message development; website management; and film, book, and event publicity.
Some years ago, Scott broke the trance of an increasingly corporate-controlled, cynical consumer culture and started applying his mainstream background and talents to the public interest, promoting nonprofits and progressive social causes.
In his new incarnation, he helped manage the media relations for the 2003 New York visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, during which time he handled various press events and nearly 500 foreign and domestic journalists from all forms of media. He has provided PR, communications and writing services for a broad range of progressive folks, from PBS documentaries to environmental groups to spiritual books, the Brooklyn Public Library, and a Gates Foundation-funded "AIDS in Asia" program inaugural event, among others. (See Clients for more.)
At the end of 2002, he attended a course on "Gandhi and Globalization: Creating Cultures of Non-Violence" led by Resurgence editor Satish Kumar and world-renowned scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva at Bija Vidyapeeth: Centre for Learning in India, a sister institution of Schumacher College in the UK.
In a previous life, he was in the New York office of interactive pioneer Red Sky (now Agency.com), where he led the external communications efforts to build awareness of and differentiate the $50 million, eight-office agency. He has managed marketing communications and media outreach at a leading advertising/media trade association and managed client campaigns for a boutique Silicon Alley PR firm, among other things.
You can find Scott's name in the masthead of Photo District News (PDN), the international magazine for photographers and visual creatives ranked among the leading titles in Chicago Tribune’s annual “50 Best Magazines." He writes regularly about the use of photography in commercial and sociocultural contexts (writing samples).
He’s also on the steering committee of Progressive PR Professionals (a network of 700-plus communicators), volunteers with the Taproot Foundation (which provides pro bono services to nonprofits; read a spotlight profile of Scott by Taproot), and is a member of the Public Relations Society of America (Association / Nonprofit section) and the New York chapter of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. He sports a degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
His personal antidotes are daily meditation and holistic living, which keep him centered and positive and his mind agile and creative. He lives among artists and activists and trees in Beacon, New York, just north of NYC in the verdant Hudson Valley.
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"... an idea or product that deserves the label 'creative' arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person."
~ social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention |
Josh Baran, founder, RenewComm / Baran Communications
Josh has been a communications and PR professional since 1982. He is best known for his work in the areas of environment, technology, corporate relations and public affairs, entertainment and films, nonprofit communications, crisis management, publishing, and religion. During his long and varied career, Josh has worked with an extraordinarily broad range of clients, companies, and leaders: from Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama to Arnold Schwarzenegger; from Time Warner, Miramax, and Sony Pictures to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and Amnesty International.
He recently founded RenewComm, an independent strategic communications firm with offices in New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles focusing on the emerging eco-economy. Among his many accomplishments in the environmental arena over the years, Josh has directed strategic communications for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth; Sony Classics’ film Who Killed the Electric Car?; the special environmental campaign around the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow for MoveOn.org; Earth Day 1990; the ABC TV "Earth Day Special"; and the ABC Television network film The Day After. His efforts resulted in a huge increase in viewers. It is still ranked as the one of the biggest television-related events in history — and an international dialogue on the dangers of the nuclear arms race. He’s also worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Foundation, and Environmental Media Association.
Josh also continues to direct Baran Communications, an independent public relations firm in New York. Among his many clients are His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his visits to the US; Crown / Harmony Books' A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell and The Joy of Living by Mingyur Rinpoche; the historic “Investigating the Mind” conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the American tour of B.K.S. Iyengar, the world’s preeminent yoga teacher. Perhaps Josh’s highest profile and most controversial crisis management project was directing the special campaign for Universal Picture’s The Last Temptation of Christ.
Josh also led Josh Baran & Associates for nearly a decade; he sold his company to Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, where he was Executive Vice President for several years. He also served as Director of Communications for Microsoft, working as a senior communications adviser to Bill Gates. He is also a contributing writer to Tricycle: the Buddhist Review and the author-editor of a spiritual anthology, 365 Nirvana Here and Now. Because of his extensive background, he is frequently consulted by the media on various issues and has appeared in Time magazine, Newsweek, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, ABC Nightline, MSNBC, Daily Variety, Psychology Today, and many others.
Stephen Kent, founder, Kent Communications
Steve has run his independent, eponymous public interest and public policy PR practice since 1988. It serves global, national, regional and community-based NGOs and has particular experience in peace and security, nuclear policy and nuclear abolition, environmental protection, public health, citizen diplomacy, civil rights, social and economic justice, globalization, corporate accountability and consumer protection issues.
He also directs the nonprofit Nuclear Free Hudson and co-founded the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition of NGOs working to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant, 25 miles north of New York City, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. A trustee of the Alice Curtis Desmond and Hamilton Fish Library, he founded in 1997 and continues to run its "Bringing the Dream Home: Civil Rights and the Hudson Valley" events series, which studies regional and national race issues.
Steve has guest lectured at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and has appeared on various radio and television programs, including NPR's "Morning Edition." He graduated from Yale University and attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris on an Alliance Française-Fulbright grant. Before founding Kent Communications, he taught literature and philosophy at Yale, was a federal intern with the State Department, a speechwriter on the 1984 Mondale/Ferraro campaign, a freelance writer and professional musician, and an international PR executive.
Steve's personal antidote is a Buddhist practice. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York with his wife Melanie and three children, two of whom are New Zealand joint citizens.