Frank Schönrock
Executive Vice President / Managing Director, Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) Germany
Frank is Managing Director of the Issues & Public Affairs Solution at BCW Germany. He is a veteran in the German communications industry with an excellent track record in international reputation building and navigating companies and its executives through challenging situations by managing multiple stakeholders including the political landscape. In more than 20 years, Frank has gathered insights from both the company and agency perspective across sectors including the food and drink, non-food, and retail industry. Frank was appointed CEO of Grayling Germany, an international communications agency, in 2014 managing the Germany subsidiary consisting of 40+ consultants. Since 2016, he also held the European Chair of Crisis & Issues Management at Grayling International, leading the crisis experts of Grayling in 23 European markets including leading international crisis mandates and trainings. Prior to his work for Grayling, Frank was VP Corporate Communications at Grünenthal Group, a German pharmaceutical company, and was responsible for global external communications. Frank was also Head of Grünenthal’s international Litigation PR team overseeing litigations in eight countries as well as spokesperson and responsible for crisis & issues management. Other relevant agency experiences include his long-standing tenure at Edelman in Frankfurt, where he last was Deputy Managing Director and Co-Head Corporate and Crisis.
Frank is a lecturer for Crisis PR at the University for Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover and Quadriga University of Applied Sciences Berlin. He gives speeches at national and international conferences related to Crisis & Issues Management and has published articles in books covering that topic.