Ishtar Schneider

Ishtar is the global people and organisation 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 across the health industry. She also drove the agency's UK gender equity and inclusion efforts and both built and ran the UK's Health marketing team. Ishtar has a deep understanding of building and executing integrated global and regional communications programmes the drive business results and positive societal impact. She is a proud global citizen and Taiwanese-American with experience working in the US, UK and Australia - where she spent years gaining deep health sector expertise and honing a keen news sense. She is currently a Women in PR Committee member, and leads the organisation's flagship mentoring programme in partnership with PR Week. She is Chair for the PRCA Equity Inclusion Advisory Board and previously served as Co-Chair of the PRCA's Health group – a committee of the world's largest PR industry association helping drive professional development programs for communications practitioners and helping raise the bar for a more inclusive PR industry.