About JRS Consulting, Inc. | Biography

Jenny Schade, Principal

Jenny Schade combines her background in communications and counseling psychology to help organizations answer that critical question, "How do your customers and employees feel about your products and services?" The answers that her research uncovers are the foundation for building strong brands and developing effective communications and relationships with employees and customers.

As an officer and director of qualitative research at Golin/Harris International, one of the world's largest public relations firms, Jenny helped build brands that included Levi's 501 jeans, Campbell's soup, L'eggs pantyhose, Hall's cough tablets, Jim Beam bourbon, Celestial Seasonings and Kleenex. Prior to Golin/Harris, Jenny worked for Edelman Public Relations, where she supervised consumer and medical programs for clients that included Kraft and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Jenny also trained as a counseling psychologist, learning to empathically understand the experience of her clients and the events central to their lives. She has counseled children, adults, couples and families and assisted with job transitions and issues as a career counselor.

Today Jenny applies her empathic listening and analytical skills to understanding the emotional connections that people have with products and services. She conducts focus groups and in-depth interviews among corporate executives, medical professionals, customer groups, business-to-business audiences, consumers, children and company employees. She is experienced in exploring reactions to products, services and issues, as well as in testing advertising campaigns, public relations programs, product and brand positionings, and messages.

Jenny's experience as an agency account director enables her to translate research findings into strategic communications recommendations. She also partners with major data tabulation companies to quantify findings and identify the key drivers of employee commitment and customer satisfaction. Her column, "Jenny Schade's Making It Count," appears bimonthly in The Measurement Standard, the international newsletter of public relations measurement.

Fluent in French, Jenny has lived in France on several occasions, starting when she was five. She received her Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University, where she has also taught. She completed the Executive Program, Building, Leveraging & Rejuvenating Your Brand, at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

She taught Integrated Marketing Communication at Columbia College in Chicago. Her research has been published in Psychological Reports and Northwestern University's Journal of Integrated Communications. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For her marketing communications and research work, Jenny has received the Silver and Bronze Anvil Awards from the Public Relations Society of America, and awards from the Publicity Club of Chicago and the International Association of Business Communicators. 


"Scores of good account people worked at Golin/Harris in my day. One of the very best was Jenny Schade. Jenny uniquely brings a smart perspective that zeroes in on the wants and needs of customers, employees and other stakeholders. Then she designs solutions that use a truly integrated mix of components to best get the job done."
- Tom Harris
Founder
Golin/Harris International