Catherine Barr Windels

Catherine Barr Windels is Founder and President of The Policy Workshop, which offers advice and assistance to business clients facing challenges in the policy arena, both in U.S. and global markets. She has over four decades of public affairs experience in government and business, with a strong focus on policy communications, and on stakeholder and opinion media relations.

Prior to founding The Policy Workshop, she was Senior Director for Worldwide Policy Mobilization at Pfizer Inc, where she served as Pfizer’s liaison with policy think tanks around the world. In that capacity, Catherine developed specialized networks of think tanks and policy experts across the globe, and sponsored studies and signature events. She also created and managed “Pfizer Forum,” a global advertorial program that appeared in publications including The Economist and The Financial Times, and featured articles by prominent policy experts.

Before joining Pfizer in 1987, Catherine served in the Reagan Administration for six years in positions including that of Acting and Associate Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, and Director of the Office of Media and Special Programs at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Catherine is on the board of the American Studies Center, the parent organization of the Radio America network and of the American Veterans Center, on the Advisory Council of the Atlas Network, and on the Advisory Board of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. She is a graduate of the Honors Program at Villanova University. She has spoken on health care and policy issues on numerous occasions, including lectures at the Harvard School of Public Health and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal.