Jonathan Barkan is the executive producer/director and founder of Communications for Learning (CFL), a full-service communications firm with offices in Conway and Arlington, Massachusetts. His work demonstrates a career-long commitment to the accuracy, appeal, and creative presentation of essential content, the value of careful process design and project management, and aesthetic and production quality.
He is multi-disciplined, with education and experience in communications strategy, media direction and production, graphic and 3-D design, photography and video, sound recording, music, teaching, and consulting. His extensive experience includes the management and creative direction of high-profile video, slide, and desktop multi-media presentations, interactive and web-based media, events, print graphics, and exhibits. Barkan has planned, designed and supervised the installation of numerous theaters, classrooms and conference rooms, and has led media, photography and production courses and workshops.
Barkan began his professional career in 1971 while a graduate student when he produced a drug abuse prevention slide show and presentation kiosk for a methadone detox center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since establishing CFL upon completing his graduate degree in 1972, Barkan has guided a staff of creative professionals, consultants, and collaborating client teams.
Barkan’s work focuses on a wide range of outcomes by reaching out to domestic and global audiences: knowledge transfer; education; donor cultivation and fund-raising; corporate capabilities and identity; change and employee communications; public relations and investor relations; marketing and product promotion; public information; motivation and management development; and human services and leadership training. Principal clients have included The Gillette Company, Polaroid Corporation, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston Public Library, Scottish Rite, The Naylor Collection – The Complete History of Photography, and most recently Harvard School of Public Health.
A college-level media instructor at The New England School of Photography for 12 years, Barkan was also on the faculty of the Simmons College (Boston) Graduate Program in Communications Management leading the required course “Emerging Communications Technologies” for 13 semesters and then “Managing Communications Media Projects.” Currently, he is teaching the master’s level “Digital Media Project Management” course at Northeastern University. He also has conducted numerous teacher training in-service and continuing education courses as well as public presentations.
Barkan was a founding member of the Advisory Board of For Fathering, a project sponsored by The Medical Foundation that hosted the annual “Dads Make a Difference” Father’s Day celebration on Boston Common. A former director of the Charles River Watershed Association, Newton, Massachusetts, Barkan served on the organization’s nominating and long-range planning committees. He is also a former member of the board of The Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center, Boston and the MA Region VI Mental Health Advisory Council.
A native of Philadelphia, Barkan attended Brandeis University and received a master’s in Educational Media from the Boston University School of Education.