Sheila Gibbons is a communications executive with extensive experience in journalism and public relations.
Gibbons is vice president of Communication Research Associates, Inc., a firm that publishes communication research and provides editorial services, strategic communication planning and support, and training to its clients. Her client base has come from industry, academia, management consulting, and non-profit organizations.
Gibbons is the former director of public affairs and spokesperson for Gannett Co., Inc., one of America’s largest diversified news and information companies and publisher of USA TODAY. She joined Gannett as a news editor in the company’s New Media division. Her corporate communications work at Gannett won awards from the International Association of Business Communicators, the Public Relations Society of America, Women in Communications and Financial World magazine.
Before joining Gannett, Gibbons served as editor of a special-market consumer magazine, Ladycom/MilitaryLifestyle, whose 500,000-circulation audience consisted of military family members and women in the military worldwide.
Gibbons is the longtime editor of Media Report to Women, a quarterly periodical devoted to news and research about the relationship between women and media. She also was a longtime columnist on gender and media for the online news service, Women’s eNews.
Gibbons is the co-author, with Maurine Beasley, of Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, published by The American University Press/University Press of America. This book was named one of the outstanding academic books of 1994 by Choice, the journal of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Strata Publishing, Inc., published the second edition in 2002. She also is the co-author, with Ray Hiebert, of Exploring Mass Media: Past, Present and Future, published by Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates in 2000.
For three years Gibbons was a fulltime faculty member at the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism. She is a popular speaker with professional and student groups on mass communication topics. She has appeared before audiences in the United States, Hungary, Poland, South Africa and Turkey.
Gibbons earned a B.A. in political science from the State University of New York at Albany and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Maryland at College Park.
She is a member of the Journalism and Women Symposium and a member of the editorial review board of the Public Relations Review.
She has been active in historic preservation efforts in Southern Maryland, where she is past president of the board of the Friends of the St. Clement’s Island and Piney Point Museums and a former trustee of Historic Sotterley, Inc. In 2016 she relocated to Carmel, California, where she continues to be engaged in community volunteerism and advocacy.