Carla Vallone is a public relations and communications professional who specializes in bringing a voice to brands via strategic communications and integrated marketing campaigns. During her 20 years in public relations and marketing, Carla has worked for and represented Fortune 100 companies as well as dynamic start-up companies. In 2011 she founded the boutique public relations firm Portavoce PR, located in Greater San Diego, to provide clients in a variety of sectors with both business-to-business and business-to-consumer communications services. Carla and her team pride themselves on collaboration, creativity and dynamic execution.
A graduate of New York University, Carla began her career in New York City at Burson-Marsteller, a leading worldwide public relations firm that is now a part of WPP Group. For five years she worked in the marketing division learning the core practice of public relations. There she worked on some of America’s most well-known brands including Sunbeam’s entry into smart appliances and Sony’s consumer electronics portfolio that included digital cameras and camcorders, flash memory and PDAs. During her second tour at Burson-Marsteller she co-managed the agency’s San Diego office.
Building on her public relations experience, Carla’s next move was to Kellogg’s headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan. There she implemented a variety of promotions to drive brand awareness and create product trial for Morningstar Farms veggie foods.
In 2002 Carla joined Segway Inc., maker of the Segway Personal Transporter, where she was a key member of the go-to-market team. For five years Carla led all public relations and communications for the company including corporate, crisis, and business-to-business communications, product publicity and regulatory communications. She implemented communication strategies to protect the company’s brand reputation from risks including state and municipal legislative limitations, perceived safety concerns, product liability allegations and two major product recalls. During her tenure she also grew the public relations practice at Segway from domestic to international and oversaw media activity in five countries.
In 2008 Carla served as senior communications manager for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), the world’s leading provider of wireless chipsets. She increased QCT’s presence in business media with key placements in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.com. She and her colleagues also devised strategies to help the division enter the social media sphere by producing a Web 2.0 newsroom, press releases, social media feeds, videos and e-newsletters.
Carla serves as the president of the Board of Trustees for Girls, Inc. of San Diego County, an organization that empowers girls to use overcome social, economic and economic barriers to succeed. In 2017 she was voted one of the top three “Leading Ladies in Non-profit” by Locale Magazine.
