Eric Kowalczyk

Eric Kowalczyk has dedicated his career to helping leaders and organizations communicate with integrity and impact. He is the author of The Politics of Crisis: An Insider's Perspective to Prevent Public Policy Disasters. Eric's passion is working to address disparate treatment issues, which formed his book's basis.

Eric is a veteran of the Baltimore Police Department. As a Captain in the department and Director of Media Relations, he helped the agency, as well as Baltimore's mayor and other leaders, confront and navigate the communications issues during the Freddie Gray riots and communicate to its hundreds of thousands of constituencies at the local level, in the glare of a national spotlight. While simultaneously facilitating local, national, and international media, Eric focused on transparency and accountability to connect with an already mistrusting public and implemented a crisis communications strategy and plan widely praised by media across the county as responsive and understanding of community concerns.

Eric has consulted with a U.S. presidential, gubernatorial, senate, house, and mayoral campaigns. He is a member of several national professional associations. Eric has a vast network of government and law enforcement contacts throughout the U.S. He has trained more than 2,000 communications specialists in 41 states and 75 cities across the United States and presented at numerous national conferences, including the 2021 Parliament of the World's Religions. Eric is a 2016 TEDx Beacon Street speaker. He is on the Executive Board of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of the World's Religions and the Advisory Board for the Cobb Institute. Eric is an ordained interfaith minister, holds a post-graduate degree in Divinity, and is currently a Doctor of Ministry candidate.