Leadership team

Doug Spong, APR
President

Doug founded Carmichael Lynch Spong in 1990 and quickly built the firm’s reputation as the PR industry’s undisputed champion of best practices. The firm is a four-time “PR Agency of the Year” award winner, and it ranks among the nation’s 25 largest and one of the world’s most decorated public relations firms.


Doug is an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA); member of Counselors Academy; past chair of PRSA’s Honors and Awards Committee; and Minnesota chapter past president. He has received six presidential citations for extraordinary service to the society. Doug also is a founding member, past director and treasurer of the Council of Public Relations Firms. He currently serves on the dean’s advisory council for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University as well as the University of Minnesota School of Journalism advisory panel for its masters in strategic communications.

Doug has been awarded several of the industry’s highest honors, including the SABRE Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement from the Holmes Group; the Donald G. Padilla Distinguished Practitioner Award from Minnesota PRSA; and the Merit Award for Achievement from Iowa State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Prior to founding Carmichael Lynch Spong, Doug was senior vice president, managing director and a board member at Colle + McVoy.

Follow @DougSpong

↑ Back To Top

Julie Batliner
Managing Director

Julie oversees day-to-day operations for the firm’s clients and staff in Minneapolis and New York.  

Julie has received the profession’s highest honors for developing innovative campaigns that achieve business results. In the past several years, her client work has won 31 awards, including four from PRWeek, 13 national Silver and Bronze Anvil awards and 13 local PRSA awards and one SABRE award. Her deep portfolio of experience includes strategic planning, media relations, special events, internal communications, cause branding, ideation and new product launch management.

Before she was managing director, Julie was chief client relations officer at Carmichael Lynch Spong. She developed a set of client relationship management tools that resulted in the highest-ever satisfaction scores for the agency.

Previously Julie was senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard and worked at Valentine Radford and Morgan & Myers Communications where she worked with clients such as DuPont, General Mills, Ocean Spray, Kellogg and Sprint.

Follow @Badliner

↑ Back To Top

Lori Robinson
Senior Principal - Director of New York Office

Lori is responsible for growing the office as well as leading key client relationships. She also guides the agency’s media relations group. Lori brings more than 20 years of experience in branding and corporate communications with special expertise in consumer and corporate media relations, influencer programs, special events and executive positioning.

Prior to joining Carmichael Lynch Spong, Lori worked at Hill & Knowlton for nearly seven years, first as the head of the New York marketing communications team where she guided a diverse portfolio. She developed media campaigns to generate national media coverage for Deloitte’s Retail, Consumer Product Goods and Travel partners. She also directed executive media programs for Beiersdorf and TomTom. While at Hill & Knowlton, she served as the U.S. marketing and business development director helping to rebuild the agency’s leadership, in particular working with national media to secure coverage for the firm.

Lori has worked with Intel and Sony Ericsson while at GCI (now Cohn & Wolfe), as well as worked on PR programs for Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc., Ericsson Mobile Phones, Georgia-Pacific, AT&T Wireless and Colgate-Palmolive while at Edelman Worldwide. In past years, she worked at Cox Communications in media relations for the broadband and cable services and also worked for several public relations agencies that focused on land use issues in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Follow @lrobny

↑ Back To Top

Emily Buchanan
Senior Principal

Emily is charged with bringing holistic, transformational ideas to new and existing agency clients, specifically in the areas of social media and nontraditional brand engagement.  

Previously Emily was senior vice president and deputy practice director for MSLGROUP’s consumer marketing practice in New York, overseeing communications, experiential and engagement efforts for top clients, including Kellogg’s, H.J. Heinz Company, Hennessy, Amazon.com, Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, Nutella, Tic Tac and Evian.

Before MSLGROUP, she worked with top national and global restaurant, retail, packaged goods and consumer electronics brands such as McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Gardenburger, McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants, Samsung, Nikon, U.S. Bank, FreshDirect, Time Warner Center and Avis Rent-A-Car. 

Emily’s work has won many top communications awards, including the PRWeek award for “Issues Management and Crisis Campaign of the Year” and a PRSA Silver Anvil Award of Excellence for “Multicultural Marketing.” She was also named a “Brand Marketer of the Year” by PR News.  

Beyond professional life, Emily donates time to Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit organization that works to ensure no child in America grows up hungry, and Taste of the Nation, a premier culinary tasting event.

Follow emilybuchanan

↑ Back To Top

Maria Reitan
Senior Principal - Chair, Lifestyle Marketing, Marketing to Women

Maria is the chair of Carmichael Lynch Spong’s lifestyle marketing group. As part of that, she leads the Marketing to Women special services group, lending her expertise on the coveted female demographic that controls more than 85 percent of the nation’s household spending. 

Maria also uses her award-winning television news background to assist clients in need of media coaching and counsel.

Maria hosts a weekly radio program titled “PurseStrings,” which features insight from leading marketing executives, authors, researchers and industry experts on how companies can reach women. The show is streamed live over WebmasterRadioFM and is available through all major podcast portals including iTunes and Mobilecast, and through RSS feeds.

Before Carmichael Lynch Spong, Maria spent 15 years as an Emmy Award-winning television news director, producer, reporter and writer. She was news director at WCCO-TV, the Twin Cities’ CBS station and WHAS-TV (ABC-affiliate) in Louisville, Kentucky; managing editor at WMAQ-TV (NBC station) in Chicago; senior executive producer at WSVN-TV (FOX affiliate) in Miami; and worked at television stations in both Carolinas.

Follow @mariareitan

↑ Back To Top

Jill Schmidt
Senior Principal - Director of Strategy – Chair, Corporate Practice

As the firm’s director of strategy and corporate practice chair, Jill brings a wealth of client-side experience and a deep background in strategic planning, new product launch management, corporate social responsibility, influencer outreach, media relations, internal communications, investor relations, crisis and issues management, and public affairs. Her client work includes Cargill, FirstEnergy Corp., the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and SUPERVALU. Jill also led the A.G. Edwards, American Humane and TransFair USA accounts.

Previously Jill was vice president of corporate communications and investor relations, and a member of the executive leadership team at International Multifoods Corp. Jill also oversaw Foundation and community relations efforts and provided marketing communications support for brands including Robin Hood flour and Bick’s pickles in Canada.

Before joining Multifoods, Jill was vice president at Tunheim Santrizos Company, a Minneapolis-based public relations and communications management firm where she  created and led corporate reputation management and thought leadership programs for clients such as Target, First Data Corp, Visa, Northwest Airlines and the Minnesota Bankers Association. 

Jill’s work has received numerous top industry honors, including the Public Relations Society of America Silver and Bronze Anvils, PR SABRE Awards and PRWeek Awards, as well as awards and recognition from the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) and the National Investor Relations Institute. Earlier she worked for John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. and was a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C.

Grete Lavrenz
Principal - Chair, Food and Beverage Practice

As chair of the food and beverage practice, Grete brings a trail of success counseling clients such as Cargill, General Mills, International Multifoods/Hungry Jack, Pillsbury and Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, to name a few. Her legacy of experience also has included work for clients outside of the food and beverage realm including 3M, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Calphalon, Clorox, Martek and Rosetta Stone.



When she was awarded a competitive scholarship from Rotary International in 2003, Grete bid farewell to her colleagues at Carmichael Lynch Spong for one year to receive a master’s degree in international public relations from the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University in Cardiff, Wales, one of the top 100 world universities. She then returned to the firm in 2004 to apply what she learned about international business and culture.



Grete shares her talents by serving in several industry organizations including the International Association of Business Communicators, the Public Relations Society of America, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and the Interpublic Group’s Women’s Leadership Network. She is a member and leader in Rotary International and is on the board of the Twin Cities Nights Rotary Club.

↑ Back To Top

Beth Miller
Principal

Beth brings a depth and breadth of experience to Carmichael Lynch Spong, particularly in the health and wellness category as well as packaged goods, retail and tourism industries. As principal, she is responsible for providing innovative and effective strategic thinking, along with superior account management for a variety of clients through the firm’s Living Well™ group and others.   

Prior to joining Carmichael Lynch Spong, Beth was senior director at The Carrot Agency, a part of UnitedHealth Group dedicated to creating solutions to improve consumers’ health and wellness. Previously she had served as executive president, account management at R&R Partners, an independent advertising agency best known for the “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign for Las Vegas tourism. 

Earlier in her career Beth was senior vice president, group management supervisor at Campbell Mithun where she led a team of health innovators on Emmy- and Effie award-winning accounts including Pfizer, Novartis, Kimberly-Clark and the American Academy of Dermatology.

↑ Back To Top