LightbulbsCreating a personal brand is rapidly becoming a necessity: both employers and customers are choosing whom they work with on the basis of a person’s personal brand just as much as their other qualifications. But developing your personal brand might not be as simple as you might hope: it’s not just a matter of buying a domain name and putting together a business card. Developing and managing your personal brand requires a unique combination of skill, knowledge, discipline, self-perspective, future-oriented thinking, and tools & techniques in order to make YOU standout from the rest of humanity. Fortunately, there a number of personal branding experts out there who can walk you through the whole process of branding YOU and relieve you of some of the burdensome labor associated with the process, such as putting together an online portfolio. While finding a personal branding consultant that fits your needs might take a bit of work, this list of 50 experts should make your search a little easier.

  1. William Arruda (website, blog)
    William literally wrote the book on building a personal brand to advance your career — Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand — with his co-author Kirsten Dixon. William has worked with an amazing list of clients, including Disney, Microsoft, and American Express; he also works with up-and-coming brands as well.
  2. Kirsten Dixson (blog)
    Kirsten is an online identity expert and co-authored Career Distinction with William Arruda. She specializes in customized personal branding approaches and offers options for building online presences. Kirsten is one of the world’s first to earn the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist certification, a program that she now facilitates in addition to Reach’s online identity certification program that she conceived.
  3. Melissa Cassera (website, blog)
    Melissa worked in public relations in a variety of industries before launching her own firm, Cassera Communications. In addition to consulting on personal branding, she offers coaching that allows clients to learn how to promote themselves as well as help with social media elements.
  4. Lauren Still (website, blog)
    Lauren is a certified personal life and career coach. While Lauren works with professionals looking to develop their careers, her talent is coaching professional women who are also balancing families and their own needs.
  5. Anna Farmery (website, blog)
    Anna offers advice on social media strategies and using social media to create brands. In addition to her consulting, Anna’s blog and podcast are very successful and have been nominated for numerous awards.
  6. Hajj Flemings (website, blog)
    Hajj’s book, The Brand YU Life, covers branding in some depth. He also teaches personal brand management at Michigan Technological University, as well as speaking regularly about brand management.
  7. Miriam Salpeter (website)
    Miriam offers a tiered approach to her consulting services: most of her efforts are focused on career coaching, but she does include personal brand consulting as part of her services — including some social media work. Miriam has over ten years of career coaching experience.
  8. Kim Batson (website)
    Kim, in addition to her career coaching, provides consulting on creating the collateral materials necessary for a good brand. She specializes in working with technology professionals, to the point that Kim is called “The CIO’s Coach.”
  9. David Sandusky (website)
    David Sandusky helps clients develop a personal brand through the use of a web-based tool called Personal Board of Advisors, which can help focus growth in a particular direction. He also provides marketing strategies for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
  10. Paul Copcutt (website, blog)
    Paul provides both snapshot assessments of personal brands and long-term personal brand coaching — and everything in between. His specialty is professionals looking to move into six-figure jobs.
  11. Dan Janal (website, blog)
    Dan has over 20 years of PR experience and was on the PR team that launched AOL. He offers both consulting and coaching services, and offers a free five-minute consultation to those interested in building their personal brands.
  12. Maureen Cullen (website)
    Maureen offers a variety of coaching venues, including individual coaching and workshops. She focuses primarily in career fulfillment and transition coaching and holds a wide variety of career coaching credentials.
  13. Anthony Fisher (website, blog)
    In addition to providing standard personal brand development services, Anthony also helps build the materials necessary to promote a person’s brand. With a design background, Anthony is capable of building websites and other key elements of a personal brand. Anthony’s clients include a variety of entrepreneurs, as well as artists, evangelists, and speakers.
  14. Louise Mowbray (website, blog)
    Louise has over 17 years of branding experience in the finance, technology, and luxury-lifestyle sectors. She provides personal branding services to clients looking to build upon their current careers with control of their personal brands.
  15. Vivian VanLier (website)
    Vivian provides career coaching and personal brand consulting services. Among Vivian’s specialties are working with Baby Boomers, as well as her well-known resume writing skills. Her resumes have been published in more than 30 books.
  16. Wendy Terwelp (website, blog)
    Wendy provides personal branding and coaching for entrepreneurs and business owners. She also provides networking advice and uses her background as a recruiter to advise clients on career issues.
  17. Louise Kursmark (website, blog)
    Louise’s background includes 26 years of resume writing and other outplacement services. She can offer advice on branding yourself during a career search — and help make that search a success.
  18. Abby Locke (website, blog)
    Abby has created personal brand solutions for a variety of executives and corporate leaders. She’s a Certified Personal Branding Strategist and can help build an online presence.
  19. Tara Kachaturoff (website)
    Tara is Michigan’s first Reach Certified Personal Brand Strategist as well as a Certified Online Identity Strategist. She is the producer and host of Michigan Entrepreneur, a weekly television talk show which features Michigan entrepreneurs and organizations that support entrepreneurship. Tara can provide several levels on services to help clients create an online presence, as well as providing personal brand consulting.
  20. Dan Schawbel (website, blog)
    Dan’s specialty is personal branding for members of Generation Y. He’s especially well known for his blog on personal branding, along with his book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.
  21. Megan Fitzgerald (website, blog)
    Megan works with expats and globally-minded professionals and entrepreneurs seeking a career or business that fits who they are and their international lifestyle.
  22. Sally Witzky (website, blog)
    Sally has transitioned from marketing such clients as Mercedes-Benz to helping clients build their own brands. In addition to her personal brand consulting, Sally also offers coaching for speaking and online brands.
  23. Luke Harvey-Palmer (website, blog)
    Luke goes a step beyond helping clients develop their personal brand. He helps them manage their brands with an eye to the long-term. He provides in-depth information about social media and its uses for personal branding.
  24. Shayna Gaspard (website)
    Shayna uses the skills she developed while working in Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations practice. She focuses on creating an overall personal brand strategy for her clients and helping them position themselves to make better use of their own brands.
  25. Maria Elena Duron (website, blog)
    Maria has made a specialty of coaching her clients through the difficulties of setting up an online presence and managing brand and reputation across many networks. She regularly works with executives and entrepreneurs looking to create a balanced approach to their own brands.
  26. Phil Gerbyshak (blog)
    Phil uses social marketing to promote personal brands. In addition to coaching clients through a wide variety of new media, Phil also speaks on a regular basis to larger groups.
  27. Jennifer Rushton (website)
    While Jennifer focuses on creating excellent resumes, she also provides personal branding services to help her clients get the total package. She offers a variety of coaching programs.
  28. Bernadette Martin (website)
    Bernadette provides a variety of personal brand management services and produces the Visibility Branding Webinar Series, which explores career development and personal branding. She works with international clients routinely and can provide cross-cultural branding strategies.
  29. Cindy Kraft (website, blog)
    Cindy’s expertise is in providing personal branding strategies, as well as career coaching for corporate finance and banking executives. She provides branding help to position clients through new media, as well as through more traditional methods.
  30. Krishna De (website, blog)
    Krishna is known as Ireland’s leading personal branding strategist. She works with executives to craft distinctive personal brands, and provides consulting services regarding social media.
  31. Nancy Branton (website)
    Nancy provides career and branding coaching starting from initial assessments all the way through the development process. She has over 30 years of experience in human resources and talent management.
  32. Walter Akana (website)
    Walter takes a holistic approach to helping clients who are dissatisfied with their current position. He helps clients find more direction in their careers and lives and build a personal branding strategy.
  33. Liz Lynch (website, blog)
    Liz’s book Smart Networking is just recently out: it reflects her talents in helping clients build a great network and mass-following both online and in-person. Liz provides several levels of coaching.
  34. Stacia Williams (website, blog)
    Stacia uses her image consulting skills to help clients manage every aspect of their personal brands. She works with a wide variety of clients, including executives, entrepreneurs, and politicians.
  35. Debbie Weil (website, blog)
    Debbie focuses on helping executives and professionals develop successful blogs. Her approach offers clients an effective way to showcase their personal brands via powerful and effective content. She provides consulting sessions as well as content strategy services.
  36. Catherine Kaputa (website, blog)
    Catherine provides her clients with the tools to think of themselves as products, helping to create brands for both professionals and entrepreneurs. Catherine has a book due out in 2009 focusing on how women, in particular, can brand themselves effectively.
  37. Diana Jennings (website, blog)
    Diana works with her clients to not only develop their personal brands but also to match their outward appearance to that brand. Her personal brand coaching includes personal style development, wardrobe consultations, and other resources to tweak a client’s presentation.
  38. Susan Guarneri (website, blog)
    Susan is known as the Career Assessment Goddess because of her ability to use assessments to help clients discover and clarify what they want from their careers. Susan can then use that information to help her clients build their personal brands.
  39. Riham El-Hawary (website)
    Riham is the leading expert on personal branding development in the Middle East. She works primarily with professionals in the area, offering a variety of consulting services to create personal brands for her clients.
  40. Deb Dib (website, blog)
    Deb works primarily with executives and limits herself to just 24 clients per year. She walks her clients through every step of the personal branding process, along with providing other career management services.
  41. Timothy O’Brien (website)
    Timothy coaches executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs in his “Rainmaker U.” program, enabling them to position themselves with personal brands far beyond those of their competitors. Graduates of Timothy’s program have won numerous awards, as well as succeeded on a professional level.
  42. Peter Montoya (website)
    Peter provides personal branding services, along with other coaching and marketing services, to financial professionals. He has limited his clientele to just the financial services industry, but he has perfected personal branding techniques for that type of professional.
  43. Karen McSteen (website)
    Karen’s past experience includes a stint as AOL’s Senior Vice President of Brand Strategy as well as Brand Vice President at Marriott International. She has turned over 25 years of brand management experience into an opportunity for clients to learn how to manage their brands from the best.
  44. Wendy Newman (website)
    Wendy has over twenty years of marketing and branding experience, working for such companies as Starbucks. She provides personal branding services to high-profile professionals, focusing on authenticity.
  45. Victoria Scott (website)
    Victoria offers image consulting services to help create a personal style and visual brand. Victoria provides information about every aspect of your appearance, even down to skincare.
  46. Rosemary Davies-Janes (website)
    Rosemary trained as a life coach and spent 15 years in marketing. She has combined her backgrounds to offer personal branding services that allow clients to define their me brands and build upon that definition.
  47. Gerry Visca (website)
    Gerry’s “Red Chair” personal coaching program provides clients with an opportunity to focus on their personal brands. The four-week program caters to entrepreneurs and includes creating a personal plan that clients can put into play.
  48. Chandlee Bryan (website, blog)
    Chandlee’s career coaching experience includes time spent as the Director of Career Services at Dartmouth College’s engineering school. Personal branding is one of several services she offers as part of her career coaching.
  49. Jan Melnik (website, blog)
    As part of the career transition resources she offers, Jan provides clients online identity management. She particularly focuses on creating an online presence that will appear when prospective employers search for you.
  50. Billie Sucher (website, blog)
    Billie’s more than 20 years of career coaching experience allows her to work with clients to develop a personal brand that will offer significant advantages during a career transition. She has worked with entry-level to executive-level clients to create personal brands.
Image credit: fpm / iStockphoto

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Post updates:
- January 12, 2009 at 11:00 AM ET: Made corrections to Tara Kachaturoff’s information.
- January 13, 2009 at 7:00 PM ET: Made corrections to Kirsten Dixson’s information.
- February 2, 2009 at 6:15 PM ET: Updated Megan Fitzgerald’s information.