Ishtar Schneider

Ishtar is the global people, inclusion and diversity communications lead for Mars Petcare – a business of over 100,000 Associates in more than 130 countries around the world. In her role Ishtar helps facilitate the execution of the organization's bold people strategy through strategic communications and brave leadership. Before joining Mars, she spent 5+ years at Edelman in London as a member of the Health practice senior leadership team. There, she led the strategic direction for global clients including Johnson & Johnson, Mars Petcare and GAVI: the Vaccine Alliance. She also drove the agency's UK gender equity and inclusion efforts and both built and ran the UK's Health marketing team – leading to the agency being awarded 2021 PR Week Health & Pharma Agency Practice of the Year. Ishtar has a deep understanding of building and executing integrated global and regional communications programmes in particular focused on media relations, executive positioning and thought leadership, awareness raising, influencer and stakeholder engagement, policy change, internal communications, brand building and corporate reputation.  Ishtar is a proud global citizen and Taiwanese American with experience working in the US, UK and Australia. She is currently Co-Chair of the PRCA's Health group –the world's largest PR industry association, Women in PR Committee and mentoring lead and gender equity lead for the PRCA Equity Inclusion Advisory Council. She previously sat on the NSW Council for the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) helping drive professional development programs for communications practitioners.   More broadly, she is a mental health, gender equity and inclusion champion regularly speaking at events and contributing to initiatives driving these priorities forward.