<div> Valerie Wilson is a 15 year Public Relations veteran with vast experience in the food, wine, hospitality and lifestyle industries. &nbsp;She has first-hand experience in working with both small and emerging companies, as well as large and established organizations. &nbsp;<span style="line-height:1.5;">After a couple of &nbsp;years at agencies In Chicago, where she started her career, she realized that Chicago was lacking the opportunity to give a voice to and represent the point of view of local fashion and art talent.&nbsp; So she created Valerie Neal Communications.&nbsp; Its first project was to promote a fashion show with local talent.&nbsp; The show attracted all of the city’s top fashion editors from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago magazine among others.&nbsp; The show went on to help launch the careers of Chicago designers&nbsp;Peter Soronen(now designer to Michelle Obama)&nbsp;Amy Zoeller,&nbsp;Patrick Patterson,&nbsp;as well as Artist LeRone Wilson. Her work and passion for pushing Chicago’s talent also helped spur a citywide interest in promoting Chicago fashion.&nbsp; Her agency also did work for&nbsp;Playboy&nbsp;and she was later tapped to launch the Chicago office for&nbsp;Wagstaff Worldwide, an L.A. based food and hospitality agency. As an agency Vice Preisdent, her clients included top restaurants like&nbsp;Nine,&nbsp;Levy Restaurants,&nbsp;Spruce,&nbsp;Bin 36,Onesixtyblue,&nbsp;House of Blues (Chicago),&nbsp;and Drink (Chicago). &nbsp;</span><span style="line-height:1.5;">Valerie later moved to New York where she landed a job as Media Director with&nbsp;</span> </div> <div> M. Young Communications, a well-established industry player representing the highend food and wine world.&nbsp; Her clients at the agency included&nbsp;The James Beard Foundation Awards&nbsp;(the Oscars of the Food industry),&nbsp;Wines from Spain(representing Spanish wines in the United States)&nbsp;the region of Campania,&nbsp;Italy,&nbsp;(representing food and wine producers from the region in the united states),&nbsp;New York Restaurant Week,&nbsp;Bertolli Sous Chef Awards,&nbsp;Brunello de Montalcino,&nbsp;City Harvest BID against Hunger, and many more.&nbsp; Her work with M. Young exposed her to the top chefs, journalists and trendsetters in the food and entertainment worlds.<span style="line-height:1.5;">After leaving M. Young, Valerie branched off to consumer marketing with a consulting position at&nbsp;Kaplow Communications, where she worked with&nbsp;LeapFrog Enterprises, both on the creation of a national literacy program and the launch of the companies FLY pen product.&nbsp; While at Kaplow, her entrepreneurial bug once again surfaced when she recognized that the agency was sitting on a golden goose of a client in&nbsp;Robert Mondavi, but was only doing a small amount of work for them.&nbsp; She took the initiative to reach out to members of the Mondavi team and convince them to do a series of events for the various wine brands.&nbsp; This led to turning the Mondavi account into a bonafide Kaplow client.&nbsp; She was later tapped to go to&nbsp;DeVries Public Relations&nbsp;where as Vice President she oversaw the&nbsp;E &amp; J Gallo&nbsp;accounts for that agency.</span><span style="line-height:1.5;">Valerie is a graduate of Northwestern University.</span> </div>