Joyce Hergenhan

Joyce Hergenhan is retired from General Electric where she served as a corporate officer for 22 years – both as GE’s vice president for communications and as president of the GE Foundation. Previously, she had been senior vice president for public affairs at the Consolidated Edison Company, a journalist with the Gannett Newspapers and a press secretary/speechwriter for a U.S. congressman. While she healed communications at GE, the company was recognized by both Fortune Magazine and the Financial Times as the best managed and most admired company in the world. In recognition of her work at GE, Ms. Hergenhan received three of the most prestigious recognitions in her profession:  She was honored with lifetime achievement awards from both Women in Communications and PR News, and she was elected chairman of The Seminar, the most prestigious organization of senior communications executives from around the world. Ms. Hergenhan has served on the boards of Syracuse University, the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications, the Inner City Foundation, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Westport Country Playhouse, the Southport Congregational Church, the Fairfield Museum and History Center, and the Connecticut Audubon Society. A graduate of Syracuse University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, she has been honored by both her alma maters. At Syracuse she has received the Arents Award, the school’s highest alumni honor, and Columbia University has honored her as “Columbia’s Connecticut Alumnus of the Year.”

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