Thaler Pekar specializes in persuasive communications, helping smart leaders and their organizations break through a crowded marketplace and achieve policy goals, raise funds, and engage audiences. She provides clients with practical tools for finding, sharing, and sustaining the success stories and organizational narratives that articulate both vision and impact.
Thaler is featured in the new book, Storied Careers: 40+ Story Practitioners Talk About Applied Storytelling, and she will be co-leading The Smithsonian Institution program on The Basics of Organizational Storytelling this April. Thaler is a Featured Contributor to PhilanTopic, the Philanthropy News Digest blog. She is also student of Improv. Thaler and her brother Jim, a brain researcher at Johns Hopkins University, blog about the intersection of science, Improv, and communication at Neurocooking.
Thaler is a frequent guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate Programs in Strategic Communications and Communications Practice; the Urban Education Leadership Program, Teachers College, Columbia University; the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Executive Master’s Program; and the Rutgers Center for Non Profit and Philanthropic Leadership. Her consulting work has taken her throughout the U.S. as well as to Malaysia, Japan, Ghana, Spain, Egypt, Senegal and Thailand. She is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting, an Inaugural Member of the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers, and a Founding Member of the American College of Women's Health Physicians. She is a long-time resident of Hoboken, NJ, and is active locally as a founding board member of Mile Square Theatre, a Fellow of Leadership New Jersey, and an advisory board member of the New Leaders Council.
Thaler has a long history in helping leaders and their organizations find, develop and share their stories. She initiated a large communications project for the Ford Foundation on religion and culture, and has trained hundreds of activists, legislators and lobbyists on how to reframe the discussion of low-wage work in America. Her extensive work in women's, children's and reproductive rights advocacy includes consulting for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the League of Women's Voters, Save the Children, the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Medical Students for Choice, the United Nations Population Fund, and Center for Reproductive Rights. She also works with organizations interested in quality education and education reform, including Achievement First, New Teacher Center, Communities for Learning, and Time Out From Testing, and with the nation's largest creator of affordable homes, Enterprise Community Partners.
Thaler's knowledge of social justice and human rights includes consulting work for International Rescue Committee, Vera Institute for Justice, PolicyLink, National Legal Aid and Defender Association, NAACP LDF, and training the Ford Foundation's Peace and Social Justice Program officers in messaging and media skills. Her communications work with progressive religious organizations includes the Episcopal Church of America, the Interfaith Alliance, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Union Theological Seminary, and Catholics for Choice. She has provided communications skills coaching for academics from Harvard, Princeton, Seton Hall University School of Law, Brandeis, Emory, Drew, Duke, and Rice Universities.
Thaler served as Communications Director for the Children's Health Fund, where she significantly increased the organization's national press exposure. During the height of both the crack and domestic AIDS epidemics, Thaler was the Public Affairs Director for Horizon Health Center, a large, inner city Federally Qualified Community Health Center. In addition to advocating on behalf of the organization's health and social services, she effectively used media to respond to the public issues surrounding their abortion clinic and corresponding reproductive rights litigation (including Rust v. Sullivan and clinic access cases).
As an advocate of farmer's markets and an enthusiastic cook, Thaler is delighted to have worked with chef and restaurateur April Bloomfield, of The Spotted Pig and The Breslin.