Profile: D. Michelle Flowers Welch – founder and CEO Flowers Communications Group

D. Michelle Flowers Welch – founder and CEO Flowers Communications Group

D. Michelle Flowers Welch is the founder and CEO of the Flowers Communications Group (The Flower Shop) – a multicultural communications agency and marketing firm based in Chicago since 1991.

The Flowers Communications Group has rapidly emerged to become one of the most sought-after players in the field, owing to its penchant for creating innovative, award-winning public relations campaigns and signature programs that reach and respect the African-American consumer.

Ms. Flowers Welch’s began her career in agency public relations at Golin/Harris Communications, pursuing her desire to work in ethnic marketing. She then later joined Burrell Communications Group as assistant vice president and rose to senior vice president in three years. Having helped to grow Burrell’s public relations division into an award-winning shop, she left to open The Flower Shop in 1991.

Flowers Welch holds a master’s degree in advertising from Northwestern University and is a magna cum laude graduate of Winston-Salem State University, where she majored in English.

She has received more than 75 industry awards for communications excellence, including more than 15 Gold and Silver Trumpets and several Awards of Merit from the Publicity Club of Chicago, plus three Silver Anvil Awards from the Public Relations Society of America.

She also holds more than 10 Spectra Awards from the International Association of Business Communicators and two CIPRA Awards from Inside PR magazine. She has been named one of Chicago’s Top 100 Black Business and Professional Women, one of the Chicago Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Citizens, is the recipient of the Woman of the Year Award given by the National Council of Negro Women, is a Chicago Urban League Beautiful People honoree, and was a charter inductee into Northwestern University Hall of Fame.

Flowers Welch served as guest lecturer in the business school at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.