Communications Practitioner's Academy

With more than 30 years’ experience, Judy Pal has served in management positions for police, private sector and the professional sports and entertainment industry in Canada and the U.S. Prior to embarking on a full-time teaching and consulting career she served as an Assistant Commissioner with the NYPD, Director of Operations for FBI-LEEDA, Chief of Staff with the Baltimore and Milwaukee Police Departments, and was a member of the command staff of the Atlanta, Savannah, and Halifax (Canada) police. She has conducted image and media training for thousands of police professionals during her more than two decades of work in law enforcement. She is also a regular contributing trainer at FBI Regional Command Colleges across the country. She has consulted for international police agencies in Canada, Chile and Trinidad and has taught and spoken at events across North America, Australia, Uruguay and Manilla. Pal is a past president of the National Information Officers Association, holds a Master’s Degree in Public Relations and earned her Certificate in Police Leadership from Dalhousie University in Canada. She also spent five years in television news. She is seen as one of the preeminent police public relations professional in the country.

Eric is the author of The Politics of Crisis: An Insider’s Perspective to Prevent Public Policy Disasters. Eric has developed a national reputation as a dynamic and engaging public speaker. Specializing in crisis communication and leadership strategies, he draws on his vast experience - in real-world, academic, and training environments. Eric is a veteran of the Baltimore Police Department. As a Captain in the department and Director of Media Relations, he helped the agency as well as Baltimore’s mayor and other leaders confront and navigate the communications issues during the Freddie Gray riots and communicate to its hundreds of thousands of constituencies at the local level, in the glare of a national spotlight. While simultaneously facilitating local, national, and international media, Eric focused on transparency and accountability to connect with an already mistrusting public and implemented a crisis communications strategy and plan that was widely praised by media across the county as responsive and understanding of community concerns. Eric has consulted with a U.S. presidential, gubernatorial, senate, house, and mayoral campaigns. He is a member of several national professional associations and has a vast network of government and law enforcement contacts throughout the U.S. He has trained more than 2,000 communications specialists in 41 states and 75 cities across the United States. Eric has presented at numerous national conferences, including the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions, and he is a 2016 TEDx Beacon Street speaker. He is on the Executive Board of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of the World’s Religions and the Advisory Board for the Cobb Institute. Eric is an interfaith minister and holds a post-graduate degree in Divinity.