Zoe Krey
BIO
Zoe is a communications and strategy professional with more than a decade of experience counseling senior leaders and cross-functional teams across Fortune 500 companies. She has held senior roles directly with Walgreens and Exelon, and has led agency-side engagements for Whirlpool (KitchenAid), Abbott (Similac), and Campbell's. Today, she serves as Senior Manager to the Chief People Officer at NRG Energy, where her work spans communications, strategy, people, and culture.
Equally at home in-house and in agency environments, Zoe brings a data-driven approach to storytelling that ensures message consistency and impact. From developing executive content to executing enterprise-wide campaigns, she excels at crafting narratives that drive engagement and elevate brand reputation, and has managed teams, budgets, and timelines across projects ranging from satellite media tours and launch events to national earned media campaigns, securing coverage in outlets including the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, and The Atlantic.
Her work has earned industry recognition across multiple campaigns, including a Gold Effie Award in Social Good and two Jay Chiat Awards for KitchenAid's "A Woman's Place," a Clio Award for Wingstop's viral Thighstop campaign, and a Shorty Impact Award for the Walgreens Shelf Life Video Series. In 2023, she was named a Rising Star by both the Chicago Ad Federation and Ragan Communications. She received DePaul's Public Relations and Advertising Outstanding Student of the Year honor in 2020, the same year she was selected as the College of Communication's commencement speaker.
Zoe earned both her B.A. in Political Science and Public Relations and Advertising and her M.A. in Public Relations and Advertising from DePaul University. She is a former contributor to Choose Chicago's "Like a Local" blog, where she wrote about Chicago neighborhoods, cultural events, and city life. She maintains deep ties to Chicago even while calling Houston, Texas home.
At DePaul, Zoe teaches a rotating roster of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Introduction to Public Relations and Communication Internships. You can follow her on LinkedIn