Jonathan Barkan is the founder and owner of Communications for Learning (CFL), a full-service communications firm based in Arlington, Massachusetts. He is multi-disciplined, with experience and education in strategic communications, mixed media production and direction, graphic and 3-D design, photography, sound recording, music, teaching, and consulting. His extensive experience includes project management and creative direction of video, slide, and desktop multi-media presentations, interactive and web-based media, events, print graphics, and exhibits. Barkan has consulted, designed, specified, and installed numerous multi-media theaters, classrooms and conference rooms, and has led media, photography and production workshops.

Suggesting a new direction in his work, Mr. Barkan coordinated the marketing and sale of The Naylor Collection – The Complete History of Photography. Working with the collector, Jack Naylor, Barkan created award-winning presentation materials, initiated mass-media print and electronic media coverage, represented the collector in negotiations, and supervised the auction and sale of over 31,000 cameras, images, photographic technology, associated ephemera, and an extensive espionage collection.

A college-level media instructor at The New England School of Photography for 12 years, Barkan was more recently on the faculty of the Simmons College (Boston) Master’s in Communications Management Department leading the required course “Emerging Communications Technologies” and then “Managing Communications Media Projects.” Over the years, he also has conducted numerous teacher training in-service and continuing education courses as well as public presentations.

Barkan began his professional career in 1971 while still a graduate student when he produced a drug abuse prevention slide show and presentation kiosk for a methadone detox center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since establishing CFL upon completing graduate school in 1972, Barkan has guided a staff of creative professionals and consultants in a wide range of design and production efforts.

Barkan’s work on behalf of his clients focuses on a variety of areas, including: fund-raising; corporate identity; change and employee communications; public relations and investor relations; marketing and product promotion; public information; motivation and management development; health care; technological, environmental and historical awareness; and human services training. Principle clients have included The Gillette Company, Polaroid Corporation, The Boston Public Library, The Scottish Rite, and The Harvard School of Public Health.

Barkan was a founding member of the Advisory Board of For Fathering, a project sponsored by The Medical Foundation that hosted the annual “Dads Make a Difference” Father’s Day celebration on Boston Common. A former director of the Charles River Watershed Association, Newton, Massachusetts, Barkan served on the organization’s nominating and long-range planning committees. He is also a former member of the board of The Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center, Boston and the MA Region VI Mental Health Advisory Council.

A native of Philadelphia, Barkan holds a bachelor’s degree in Russian Language and Literature from Brandeis University (’71) and a master’s degree in Educational Media from the Boston University School of Education (’72). He and his wife, acupuncturist Margaret Ryding, live in Arlington Heights and have two children, Sophie and Ben.