Matthew Gonring joined Jackson National Life Insurance Company (Jackson®) in July 2011 as vice president of Corporate Communications. For the past 30 years, Mr. Gonring has worked for many major global corporations, and in the last 20 years alone, he has led the communications and/or marketing function for six multi-national corporations. His corporate experience spans consumer products, manufacturing, professional and financial services, airlines, healthcare and environmental organizations. He is widely published and recognized as a global leader in marketing integration as well as internal, organizational and external communications.
At Jackson, Mr. Gonring leads the corporate and business functions of communications, including corporate social responsibility, internal communications and social and external media. Before joining Jackson, he led all corporate and marketing communications as chief communications officer for Pactiv before it was acquired by private equity. For three years prior, Mr. Gonring served clients in a variety of industries, ranging from financial services, pharmaceuticals and automotive to consumer products and manufacturing as a consultant with Gagen MacDonald. This prior work experience included a broad range of applications, such as functional operations and structure, change management, leadership communications, employee engagement, channel application and utilization, messaging and organizational alignment.
Until 2006, Mr. Gonring was vice president of Global Marketing and Communications at Rockwell Automation, where he managed the corporation’s global marketing, internal, external and Web communications, advertising, issues management and brand development. At Rockwell, he nurtured and developed an integrated global team reflecting the company’s matrix structure, led the brand repositioning efforts, created a customer experience center and measurement process, established fact-based internal programming and implemented substantial technology investments resulting in significantly enhanced marketing and communications programming.
Before joining Rockwell, Mr. Gonring was vice president of Corporate Communications for Baxter International, where he led internal and external communications, Web and business unit communications and global brand development. Under his leadership, Baxter adopted a master brand model and developed a centralized Web management team. Prior to working for Baxter, he spent three years as managing partner of Communications and Integrated Marketing for Arthur Andersen. As the firm’s top marketing and communications executive, he oversaw development and implementation of a new firm-wide business brand strategy. Additionally, he managed communications surrounding the Andersen/Accenture arbitration. Before his Andersen career, he spent 10 years at USG Corporation where he was vice president of Corporate Communications, leading communications and marketing at the corporate and business unit levels. A notable accomplishment at USG includes managing communications during a prepackaged bankruptcy, a leveraged recapitalization and a hostile takeover. Mr. Gonring also spent eight years in the airline industry holding key headquarters communications assignments with United Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Additionally, he served in state and federal government environmental protection agencies early in his career.
Mr. Gonring has been a member of the graduate faculty at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Integrated Marketing Communications program, where he also taught marketing and internal communications courses, for 12 years. He is currently a member of the graduate faculty at George Washington University. He has written extensively for professional and business periodicals and is a frequent speaker in top-level communications and marketing forums. He has authored a chapter on news media relations in the Integrated Marketing Communications Handbook, among other business books. A board member of The Arthur W. Page Society and co-chair of The Institute for Public Relations, Mr. Gonring has served as a board member and adviser for 10 different consulting, not-for-profit and professional associations.