Jim is a 20-year communications veteran who built WeissComm Partners into the nation’s largest independent PR firm focused exclusively on healthcare. Before starting WeissComm in 2001, he directed communications at Heartport, a medical device company bought by J&J; RPR, now Sanofi Aventis, a global pharmaceutical company; and Genentech, the world’s largest biotechnology company.
Jim began his career at such leading PR firms as Hill & Knowlton, Ketchum and GCI. He graduated from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Because healthcare, which makes up over one-third of the U.S. gross national product, is governed in large part by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, the industry needed a dedicated set of CLIO awards so the creative and execution could be judged more fairly through this unique lens. In turn, the CLIO imprimatur further validates and points to the importance of the healthcare communications industry and its growing influence and proliferation over the last decade. I’m honored to be among the CLIO Healthcare Awards’ founding Board of Advisors and hope to bring these awards to equal prominence and dominance as the original CLIO Awards.