Biography

Don is the man whose name is on the door of Middleberg Communications. With more than 30 years in the communications business, he has created innovative and effective programs for such companies as American Express, AXA Financial, Consumer Reports, Dreyfus, Gartner, IBM, Reuters and United Airlines.

Don’s first firm, Middleberg & Associates, started in 1989 with core competencies in corporate and financial services and expanded by attracting clients in technology, consumer goods, publishing and life sciences. In 2000, the agency became Euro RSCG Middleberg when it was acquired by Euro RSCG, the largest communications division within Havas, the world’s sixth-largest communications group.

In the 1990s, his firm’s technology practice gave Don an early window to the Internet and led him to become one of the first communications practitioners to understand the web’s long-range impact on public relations and corporate communications. With Professor Steven Ross, formerly of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Don initiated “The Middleberg/Ross Media Survey,” a groundbreaking and widely read annual study of the nation’s print and broadcast media. Don’s book, Winning PR in the Wired World, was published by McGraw Hill in 2001 and remains required reading for communications majors at major universities and professionals at Fortune 500 companies.

Don has lectured extensively on public relations before industry and educational forums including the American Advertising Federation, the Arthur Page Society, the Financial Communications Society, the Public Relations Society of America, Boston University, Cornell, New York University and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Regularly asked for commentary by magazines and newspapers, Don has been seen and heard on CNBC, C/Net, CNN and National Public Radio.

Don holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s of business administration in marketing.