Michele Conklin
Senior Health Care Consultant & Health Writer

Michele Conklin’s health care background is a rare blend of equal parts award-winning journalist and marketing communications strategist. What this means to her clients is that she can think on both sides of any communication strategy to engage audiences while achieving business objectives. This knack is clearly demonstrated whether she is positioning a brand, creating B2B sales initiatives or developing editorial content. The trick is identifying what the targeted audience needs and how that matches what the client can deliver.

“I’m driven by a personal mission to empower people with knowledge,” Michele says. “Whether it’s a woman just diagnosed with breast cancer or a hospital purchasing agent who needs to buy new OR equipment, everyone needs credible information they can use to solve their problems. The key is starting with the audience, not your company or your product.”

Michele started her career in the public relations department of the International Headquarters of Shriners Hospitals where she created a quarterly magazine that lives on nearly a quarter of a century later. After earning her Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA), Michele moved into hospital marketing and strategy for a large hospital system in Tampa, Fla.

Her passion for writing soon took her back to school for a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, after which she became a journalist with several daily papers including the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. While with the Rocky, she covered the sale of several non-profit health organizations, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and HealthOne. She won the Morton Margolin Prize for Distinguished Business Reporting from the University of Denver for uncovering the complicated financial deal behind the HealthOne sale.

Michele left the Rocky to become Vice President of Marketing Communications for Centura Health, Colorado’s largest hospital system, and later Executive Director of Strategy and Marketing for Porter Adventist Hospital where she worked as part of the executive team to rebuild the hospital and take it out of the red.

In 2006, Michele left the hospital world to become a senior health care marketing consultant and health care writer. She specializes in all types of health care communications: consumer health, health care business and reform, and medical science. Michele creates strategies and content to engage customers in an ongoing relationship that defines the client’s brand and supports its marketing objectives. She also develops custom publications, white papers and other marketing communication content for hospitals, physician groups, medical researchers, medical device and pharmaceutical companies, and non-profit health organizations.

Michele lives in Littleton, Colo, with her husband, a medical malpractice defense attorney, and their two sons. Like many Coloradans, she is extremely active, enjoying skiing, hiking, golf, running and martial arts. She is the co-chair of the Friends of the Depression Center at the University of Colorado and a past board member of the Women’s Bean Project.