Bill Atkinson is President of Atkinson Strategic Communications, a Baltimore-based public relations firm. Atkinson specializes in strategic communications, media relations, grassroots strategies, and crisis communications. He launched Atkinson Strategic Communications in January 2020 after 15 years in the public relations business and 21 years as a newspaper reporter.
Past and present clients include, Coca-Cola Consolidated, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the country, Ambu, a Danish medical device maker with its U.S. headquarters in Columbia, Md., Fluidda, a Belgium-based company that produces 3D images of lungs, and Think Consulting, a Baltimore-based management consulting firm.
Prior to starting his own firm, Atkinson was a partner in 212 Communications, which he joined in June 2015, and focused on strategic and crisis communications, media relations, and grassroots strategies. Before that, he was a senior vice president at global public relations agency Weber Shandwick. At Weber’s Baltimore office, Atkinson specialized in strategic and crisis communications as well as reputation management. He helped develop Weber’s environmental public relations practice. Clients included Constellation Energy, Honeywell, General Motors, and Bank of America.
Atkinson specializes in media relations and has worked with reporters and producers at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, CNBC, ABC, Reuters, Associated Press, and NPR.
Before becoming a public relations practitioner in 2005, Atkinson was a business columnist and financial reporter at the Baltimore Sun where he wrote a twice-weekly column that tracked the personal dimensions of top executives of Maryland corporations.
He was also the newspaper’s economics correspondent and covered the banking industry, stock market, mutual funds, brokerage houses, investment banking, and white-collar crime. A series of stories on Allfirst Bank was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. Atkinson also appeared on CNBC’s American Greed, ABC News’ podcast, “Have you seen this man?” and Hulu documentary, “Have you seen this man?”
Atkinson was an editor at American Banker newspaper in Washington, D.C., and a reporter covering federal regulators and regional and community banking issues. He also worked as a reporter for the Washington Business Journal and for American City Business Journals newspapers in San Jose, CA., Columbus, Ohio, and Milwaukee, WI.
Atkinson is on the board of directors of Banner Neighborhoods, a neighborhood association in east Baltimore that provides sports programs for youngsters in east Baltimore and offers services for elderly residents. He is also a director of Prospect Hill Cemetery of Towson and was also a director of Junior Achievement of Central Maryland. Atkinson holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Saint Norbert College in DePere, Wis., and he attended Marquette University for graduate studies in journalism.
