our team

As chief executive officer, Bruce M. Hennes has grown Hennes Communications into
one of the few firms in North America focused on crisis communications, crisis
management and litigation communications consulting. Test test

Following years of political campaign work at the local, state and federal levels, Hennes
spent three years as executive director of B’nai Jeshurun-The Temple on the Heights in Cleveland, Ohio followed by three years in the automotive industry providing government and PR counsel, opening his own communications firm in 1989.

As a nationally known crisis communication specialist and media trainer, Hennes is an in-demand speaker on the many facets of crisis communications and crisis management, speaking frequently to bar and trade associations, elected officials, police, fire, education and health officials. He is especially noted for his insights on handling extreme situations involving threats to life and limb, and often is invited to speak at events sponsored by emergency management agencies.
For the last 20 years, he has published Crisis Management Today, a twice-monthly newsletter with more than 8,500 subscribers.

Hennes is a longtime member of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s executive committee, making him one of just a few non-attorneys to sit on the board of a major metropolitan bar association. He is recipient of the bar association’s President’s Award in 2008 and 2018 and on the faculty of the Ohio State Bar Association’s Leadership

Academy. He was a four-time keynoter for the American Bar Association’s Bar Leadership Institute, on the faculty of the Winding River Managing Partner Bootcamp and he annually teaches more than 40 continuing legal education seminars to law firms and state and local bar associations across the country. In 2011, he received the Communicator of the Year award from the International Association of Business Communicators, Cleveland; and in 2013, he received a Gold “Rocks” award and “Best of Show” award from the Public Relations Society of America, Greater Cleveland Chapter, for his crisis communications work related to a ferry boat crash in New York City’s Financial District. In addition, he was named one of the “50 Game-Changers of PR for 2017” by industry publication PRNews. In 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 he was named to the Lawdragon 100 Leading Consultants and Strategists, the definitive guide to the financiers, recruiters, marketing and communication gurus on whom the legal profession relies. “These are 100 of the most trusted advisors to the legal profession, ” said Lawdragon, and in 2022 he was elected to the Lawdragon Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was named by the National Law Review (founded in 1888) as a “Go-To Thought Leader” for columns he contributed to the publication, one of the most widely read business law websites in the U.S. And in 2021, 2022 and 2023 he was named by Cleveland Magazine to The Cleveland 500 List of the Most Powerful People.

Hennes is past chairman of the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s public affairs committee and past chairman of The Cleveland Jewish News. Currently, he is an associate professor at the Scripps College of Communications at Ohio University, an adjunct professor at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University, and an instructor in the university’s Ohio Certified Public Manager Program. In 2010, he was inducted into the Plain Local Schools (Canton, Ohio) Hall of Fame. A member of The 50 Club of Cleveland, comprised of the city’s top CEOs, Hennes has a degree in political science from York University in Toronto, Canada and he is certified in effective communications by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Thom Fladung serves as managing partner for Hennes Communications. He brings more than 33 years of daily newspaper and digital media experience to the agency, having served as a top editor at some of the nation’s largest newspapers such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Detroit Free Press. Over the past decade, Fladung has also played a lead role in helping newsrooms enter the digital age, including web, social media and handheld digital devices.

Fladung is expert at crafting effective, strategic messages on hard deadlines. He is also experienced at quickly evaluating, assembling and disseminating information – crisis management skills that are critically important for clients coping with reputation management issues and breaking crises.

He is intimately familiar with the relentless content requirements of the 24/7 news cycle and the necessity and nuances of communicating on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. He recognizes the crucial role social media plays as a first alert for many consumers of information.

Fladung has overseen newsrooms of more than 300 journalists and has directed dozens of award-winning investigations, breaking-news stories, human interest stories and features. Highlights include helping direct six journalists reporting from the Iraq war after the invasion in 2003 for the Detroit Free Press; leading coverage during the Northeast blackout of 2003 in Detroit and getting the newspaper out with no power; and overseeing coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2007 while serving as editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

In his role as a lead editor, Fladung was responsible for multimillion-dollar newsroom budgets along with the management of the newsrooms, including overseeing hiring, career development, performance evaluations, layoffs, union negotiations and more. He also has been responsible for managing the reputation of the many news organizations he has led, frequently serving as their ambassador for public speaking engagements, and serving as one of the first points of contact for customers.

Most recently, Fladung served as managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the newsroom. Prior to that, he was editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, managing editor of the Detroit Free Press and managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal. He has also held a variety of editing and reporting positions at those and other newspapers and has reported on business, politics, state government, crime and courts and sports.

A native of Canton, Ohio, Fladung is a graduate of the University of Dayton. He is on the boards for The Press Club of Cleveland and Truly Reaching You (TRY), a reentry service for men leaving prison. He has served on a number of other boards, including the Ohio Newspaper Association; Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Columbia, S.C.; Christ Child House in Detroit; and the Minnesota News Council. In 2017, Fladung received the Communicator of the Year award from the International Association of Business Communicators.

Scott Newell has been a journalist since 1972. He currently freelances for several national television firms, including NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, The Today Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, PBS NewsHour, NFL Films and many others.

He is a familiar face to Northeast Ohioans after spending 18 years on the air at WKYC TV-3. His first job was reporter for The Detroit News.

Newell anchored and reported in Denver and Atlanta before filling the same role in Cleveland. He has won 16 regional Emmys. He also spent five years as senior field producer for the nationally syndicated program, A Current Affair, scooping networks on stories such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the O.J. Simpson murder case and the Susan Smith murder case.

Other significant stories covered by Newell include the 2023 derailment at East Palestine, Ohio (PBS NewsHour), Ohio reproductive rights initiative (NBC News), rioting in Ferguson, Missouri (NBC News), Hurricane Sandy (The Weather Channel), the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound jet on Christmas Day, 2009 (NBC News), the rescue of ex-Iraq POW Jessica Lynch and the crash of United Flight 93 (NBC News).

Besides doing media training throughout the U.S., Newell also does freelance producing, videography and non-linear editing. During football season, he shoots for NFL Films at Cleveland Browns home games.

Scott Juba serves of counsel to Hennes Communications. In his career, he has worked with numerous high-profile clients from across the world on issues involving crisis communications, reputation management, social media monitoring, social media strategy, communication strategy, search engine optimization and media relations.

He is a recognized thought leader on social media and on the use of technology to communicate. Juba is renowned for his online monitoring, in which he marries the data-capturing capability of advanced monitoring tools with the human intelligence required to strategically analyze online discussion of vital interest to a client. From the perspective of a seasoned crisis communicator, he assesses the volume, tone and influence of the discussion.

Additionally, he is particularly skilled at working with institutions of higher education and has served some of the nation’s leading schools, including Phillips Academy, which is often referred to as America’s best high school.

He has conducted training sessions for many organizations, including The American Association of FundraisingProfessionals (AFP), Business Volunteers Unlimited (BVU), Neighborhood Leadership Development Program (NLDP), Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, Cleveland Department of Public Health, Canton City Schools, Malone University and Hiram College. He has also guest lectured at the Case Weatherhead School of Management.

Juba has received numerous awards from organizations such as Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the Ohio House of Representatives and former Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic have also formally honored his work.

Juba’s educational background includes a master’s degree in public relations from Kent State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Baldwin-Wallace College, where he was a Collegiate All-American Scholar and graduated summa cum laude.

Howard Fencl serves of counsel to Hennes Communications, one of the few firms in the U.S. focused exclusively on crisis communications and crisis management. Fencl served more than 11 years on the Hennes Communications staff as vice president.

Fencl specializes in crisis communications, crisis management, issues management, media relations and media training. His crisis experience includes helping clients deal with accusations of criminal behavior, intellectual property disputes, regulatory scrutiny, labor issues, sudden leadership changes, product recalls and other high-stakes reputation issues.

Hennes Communications counts among its current and former clients such companies as Akron General Health System, APM Terminals, Carpenter Technology Corporation, Communicare Health Services, Cuyahoga Community College, Evonik, Forest City Enterprises, The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Hospice of the Western Reserve, Interlake Steamship Company , KeyBank, Lake Health, Lubrizol, Materion Corporation, the MetroHealth System, NASA, Oberlin College, Positively Cleveland, Riverside Companies, SeaStreak, Westfield Insurance, and many of Northeast Ohio’s leading law firms.

Prior to joining Hennes Communications, Fencl served as assistant news director at Cleveland’s NBC affiliate, WKYC-TV (a Gannett/TEGNA station). He also worked at Edward Howard & Co. (now Fahlgren Mortine), serving a diverse client base including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Rubbermaid, Ben Venue Laboratories, the Cleveland Clinic and the Greater Cleveland Growth Association (now the Greater Cleveland Partnership). He has written speeches for numerous executives, including former Congressman Dennis Eckart and Pro Football Hall of Famer Gayle Sayers. In the 1990s, he worked as general manager for Multiverse, one of the pioneer Internet service providers in Northeast Ohio. Fencl was pivotal in creating and launching the city of Cleveland’s first presence on the World Wide Web in late 1994 in his capacity as director of communications for The New Cleveland Campaign. And, he was a television news producer and executive producer for a dozen years, working at WKYC-TV and WEWS-TV in Cleveland and WBNS-TV in Columbus.

As assistant news director at WKYC, Howard was responsible for crafting the news department’s pioneering cross- platform strategic content delivery plan, successfully launching one of the first social media sites for a Gannett-owned television station in 2007. The plan was subsequently adopted by many of Gannett’s 22 television properties. He won both the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award and a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for his role in leading WKYC’s breaking news coverage of the Chardon, Ohio, school shootings in 2012.

Fencl graduated as valedictorian from Denison University, and received his M.A. at Hiram College. He is immediate past president of the Cleveland Association of Phi Beta Kappa and served on the boards of the Press Club of Cleveland and Near West Theatre. He earned the accreditation of the Public Relations Society of America.