Bio

Robin Schepper is an experienced manager who provides professional leadership coaching, leads retreats, develops strategic plans and specializing in communications. She believes that the most effective tool of leadership is communications – whether it is in personal relationships, organizations, coalitions or individuals. 

After finishing a four-year project working with the Athens Organizing Committee for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games where Robin provided strategic communications counsel, created and trained the staff of the communications and press and worked with thousands of reporters from around the world covering the Olympics, she decided to start her own company called Wayfinder, Inc. in 2005.

Wayfinder's clients include the Casey Trees Endowment, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Island Press, American Forests, The Dewey Square Group, Liston/Adelstein Media Consulting, Oxfam America, the Vera Institute of Justice and the Center for International Policy. Robin is a certified Retreat Coach, a member of the International Coaching Federation and received her coaching training at CoachU.

Over the past 15 years, Robin has worked in many arenas. She was a small business owner, co-founding Pyramid Communications, a Seattle-based public affairs company that specializes in environmental, Native American and social justice concerns. She has worked on a number of international events including the 1997 G-8 Economic Summit and the 50^th Anniversary of NATO, both hosted by the United States. And has worked for both government agencies and non-profit groups including the Centers for Disease Control, the Ford Foundation, the Ancient Forest Alliance, Save our Wild Salmon, and the Legal Services Council.

Robin has spent many years working in Democratic politics starting with the 1988 presidential campaign where she worked for Rep. Gephardt, Reverend Jackson and Gov. Dukakis and served as deputy press secretary for the first African-American chairman of the Democratic Party, Ron Brown.  She worked on the 1992 and 1996 Clinton-Gore campaigns running Washington State in 1996. She worked for the White House setting up official visits for President Clinton and Vice President Gore to China, Croatia, Venezuela, Spain, Germany and Uganda.  And she went to Denver to work in the Obama press office during the 2008 Democratic Convention working on placing surrogates on TV stations around the country.

Since becoming a mother, Robin has become an advocate for finding ways for more children to walk and bike to school.  In 2008, she won a federal Safe Routes to School grant for her older son's elementary school and worked with the DC Department of Transportation to install sidewalks, bike racks, start a student safety patrol and walking school buses.  In 2009, her organizing efforts were rewarded by winning Chairman Oberstar's National Safe Routes to School Award beating out thousands of schools around the country.  Realizing that there was more to do in the neighborhood, Robin teamed up with a senior pedestrian advocate to start a new organization called Connecticut Avenue Pedestrian Action (CAPA) that is working to create a master pedestrian plan by 2011 for Connecticut Avenue working with the DC Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Police Department.

Robin lives in Washington, DC with her husband and their two sons.