KRISTAL MCKANDERS

Kristal McKanders brings award-winning public relations experience and real-world broadcast insights to her clients at Jackson Spalding. She is a key player on our Chick-fil-A team, managing brand development and national campaigns.

She joined our firm in 2010 following almost three years at a global agency where she led large initiatives for brands like Best Buy, McDonalds and Porsche Cars North America. Her work for two Best Buy campaigns earned the PRSA Silver Anvil Award of Excellence, our industry’s most coveted award. This recognition celebrated the success of Best Buy’s consumer education campaign on the digital television transition and for a promotion tied to “Black Friday,” the busiest shopping day of the year.

Kristal majored in English Literature at Atlanta’s Spelman College, graduating summa cum laude and as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. She earned her Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, which led to reporting and producing stops at WYCC-TV in Chicago, WDIV-TV in Detroit, Clear Channel Radio in Ann Arbor, Mich., and in Washington, D.C. where she served as a correspondent for KVIA-TV in El Paso.

We can thank the northern winters for setting her sights southward and turning her focus to public relations. She moved back in 2007 and says her journalistic background helped her to hit the ground running for clients.

Kristal grew up in Belleville, Mich. a suburb of Detroit. She has a lifelong passion for music, which took her and her flute to Carnegie Hall in the late 1990s. Today she dances to a different tune, unwinding with dance classes as her schedule permits in Atlanta.