Ishtar Schneider

Ishtar is the global people, inclusion and diversity communications lead for Mars Petcare – a business of over 100,000 Associates in more than 130 countries around the world. In her role Ishtar helps facilitate the execution of the organisation's bold people strategy through strategic communications and brave leadership. Before joining Mars, she spent 5+ years at Edelman in London as a member of the Health practice senior leadership team. With a background in health communications, Ishtar has a deep understanding of building and executing integrated global and regional communications programmes, in particular, media relations, executive positioning and thought leadership, awareness raising, influencer and stakeholder engagement, policy change, internal communications, brand building and corporate reputation. She is currently a Women in PR Committee member and mentoring lead and is incumbent Chair for the PRCA Equity Inclusion Advisory Board. She served as Co-Chair of the PRCA's Health group for 5 years – a committee of the world's largest PR industry association for nearly 5 years and during that time was inducted as a PRCA Fellow for outstanding contributions to the industry. She previously sat on the NSW Council for the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) helping drive professional development programs for communications practitioners. More broadly, she is a mental health, gender equity and inclusion champion in the wider industry regularly speaking at events and contributing to initiatives driving these priorities forward.