Our Story

Our Evolving Story:

Lowery Communications was officially ‘born’ in 1990.  However, founder Joan Lowery has been evolving her work since she began her acting career in the 1980s. Actress, corporate trainer, TV host, radio reporter, author, media trainer, instructional technologies designer and more – with focuses on health care, high tech and the wine industry.

As an actress/instructor for Theater Workshop Boston, a leader in the field of theater-in-education, Joan developed her facility to adapt acting skills to the context of education and later corporate training and career education. Joan went on to acquire a Master’s Degree in Education (M.Ed.) from Antioch College, Cambridge, MA. where she focused on training design and delivery for adult learners.

She further honed her training research and instructional design skills as a Project Manager in the Office of Learning Design and Technology at Forum Corporation, Boston. Ever the learner herself, she eventually left her corporate position and moved to Sarasota, Florida where she became a talk show host and reporter on radio and television. As a journalist she applied her training skills to produce programming that educated and engaged the public and challenged the ‘status quo’ of listeners and viewers.

After several years in the broadcasting industry Joan returned to training with a focus on designing and delivering innovative, highly interactive skills-based training programs for both corporate, government and non-profit sectors. With her background in journalism, specializing in media training was a natural choice. Through the media trainings she honed her ability to use video recorded role playing, coaching and rehearsal technologies. This expertise, combined with her acting and teaching background, led to requests to design and deliver communication skills- oriented training programs that are immediately actionable and long-term sustainable.

As Joan’s training design and delivery portfolio grew she has partnered with leading practitioners in the field — further honing her skills and scope of experience. Today Lowery Communications offers a variety of communication skills-based programs for clients around the globe. Its team of practitioners has expertise in the fields of organizational development, journalism, leadership, sales training and presentation skills.

Industry Focuses – Health Care, High Tech, Wine, Non-Profits and More

It is Lowery Communications’ passion and mission to contribute to positive health care change by improving the quality of communication between physicians, nurses, patients and their families. Toward achieving this goal,  in 2012 Lowery Communications created a dedicated Patient Safety Communications division. PSC works with medical students, interns, residents, senior-level physicians and other health care leaders in a variety of settings.

Joan is the author of Culture Shift, A Leader’s Guide to Managing Change in Health Care, published by American Hospital Publishing, Inc.(1997). Her extensive experience training physicians and other health care providers to communicate in the media led to requests to adapt these skills to help improve physician/patient communications and team work. She served on the faculty of The American College of Physician Executives as a communication skills lecturer.

For the last two years she has been a faculty member for the Telluride Patient Safety Education Round Table. At these summer retreats for medical students, interns and residents Joan teaches the Listening Clinic Awareness sessions. She works with hospitals, medical residents and physician groups to help them improve their listening skills, as well as their ability to communicate clearly, concisely and with empathy and sensitivity.

Additionally, Lowery Communications works extensively with some of the world’s leading high tech companies and wineries — helping their leaders hone their communication and media presentation skills. The company has a long and successful history of designing and delivering customized programs that meet specific corporate training needs for employees and leaders around the globe. Lowery Communications programs have a proven track record of being delivered cross culturally in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.