Frank Oswald

Frank J. Oswald is an independent communications consultant and writer. He has led the development of corporate, marketing and investor communications for leading companies and organizations for more than four decades.

Oswald works extensively with technology, financial services, healthcare and industrial clients, as well as major universities and nonprofits. He has helped brand (and rebrand) Fortune 500 companies, build industry-leading corporate social responsibility programs, and launch prominent startups, including the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2009, and Jet.com (now the engine of Walmart’s online business) in 2015.

Oswald’s early career included advertising and PR management positions at GE Medical Systems, promoting the company’s first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, and Sentry Insurance, where he helped develop the industry’s first “plain talk” insurance policies. Between 1984 and 1994, he won more than 30 national and international creative awards working in senior positions at two east-coast design and communications firms.

Since 2010, Oswald has been on the faculty of Columbia University’s Strategic Communication program, where he has taught classes in communications theory, digital communications, persuasion and ethics, and been an advisor for the program’s capstone project. He currently teaches “Ethical Decision Making for Communicators.” Oswald’s essay, “Ethical Dilemmas and Purpose-Led Decision Making,” was included in “Perspectives on Purpose: Building Brands and Businesses  for the Twenty-First Century,” published by Routledge in 2019.

Oswald earned a M.S. in strategic communication from Columbia University and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a Harry J. Grant Milwaukee Journal scholar.