Jackeline Stewart-Hawkins Joins BCW to Lead Polycultural Consulting UnitAugust 10, 2023

NEW YORK, August 10, 2023 – BCW, the leading global communications agency, announced today that Jackeline Stewart-Hawkins has joined the agency as Executive Vice President, Polycultural Consulting Unit lead. This capability helps clients understand, connect with and move diverse stakeholder audiences through nuanced, hyper-resonant, precisely deployed communications and campaigns that are culturally relevant and promote diversity and inclusion. She joined BCW on August 1st and is based in Washington, D.C.

"Jackeline is an exceptional talent who has been leading polycultural and multicultural marketing efforts throughout her career and understands the commercial imperative of polycultural for our clients’ businesses," said Mary Corcoran, President, North America, BCW, to whom Stewart-Hawkins reports. "With the demographic of America continuing to evolve, it is more crucial than ever that all of our programs speak to our clients' most important audiences in the most genuine and credible way possible to move people and forge enduring relationships. Jackeline will be an exceptional partner who ensures that a polycultural approach is embedded into all of our work."

BCW's Polycultural Consulting Unit goes beyond general market, multicultural or cross-cultural planning to consider an audience’s multidimensional and sometimes fluid markers of identity, highly differentiated life experiences, and specific views on racial and societal issues. BCW categorized these indicators into three key pillars of identity to map points of connection, universal insights and shared human truths between client and stakeholders. Those pillars include:

• Cultural Heritage, including race, ethnicity, traditions and language
• Cultural Status and Identity, which considers lifestyle, sexual orientation, education and class/income, among other factors
• Cultural Zeitgeist, which accounts for factors associated with a moment in time, such as art, economics, fashion, pop culture and vernacular, etc.

Prior to joining BCW, Stewart-Hawkins spent nearly five years with Edelman, rising from Vice President, D.C. Brand, Multicultural Communications, Diversity & Inclusion to Executive Vice President, Head of U.S. Multicultural Communications. In leading the offering, her team focused on multicultural consumer activations, multicultural media engagement; purpose-led programming; crisis management; chief diversity officer onboarding and executive visibility; DEI strategy, programming and communications; audience mapping; and strategic multicultural and cross-cultural competency counsel.

Before joining Edelman, she spent two years at Spitfire, developing expertise for the firm in civil rights and racial justice. Before that, she was Vice President, Strategic Communications with the Opportunity Finance Network, leading reputation and visibility programs for the organization as well as community development financial institutions. From 2012 – 2015, Jackeline was an Obama Administration Appointee, serving as the deputy and press secretary for the U.S. General Services Administration. Earlier in her career she was a writer for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and a Senior Media Relations Specialist with UnidosUS, where she is currently a board member

"BCW's Polycultural Consulting Unit is the epitome of best practice when it comes to centering all aspects of identity when communicating with key audiences with precision," said Stewart-Hawkins. "I am incredibly excited to join BCW and to bring more polycultural thinking to all of our work."