Martha Kurth Harbin
Martha Kurth Harbin is a Florida-based public policy consultant who successfully manages issues and drives change through communications strategies blending policy development, public affairs, media relations, coalition-building, grassroots organization, and advocacy. Her work has played critical roles in some of the state’s most high-profile public policy debates of the past 20 years including those related to water supply, recycling, seaport security, pain clinic regulation, public health, tobacco policy, drug pedigree, power plant siting, and casinos.
In addition, her extensive community and grassroots organizing and outreach, contacts, and experience have impacted consumer behavior, created word-of-mouth buzz for new products and services, and defeated urban legend and other viral myths for some of the nation’s largest and most well-known corporations. Most recently her work has crossed international boundaries to include policy-shaping efforts of global organizations such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and EuropeAID.
A former newspaper reporter and radio producer, Harbin has good working relationships with members of the state’s media, particularly those in the Capitol Press Corps. Several of these relationships date back more than 20 years. Her media background makes Harbin adept at finding news hooks for her clients that attract coverage and placement. Additionally she embraces social and alternative media, maintaining site content and the on-line presence of several clients, and has cultivated relationships with a number of the state’s most influential bloggers.
Harbin founded her practice in 1998. After a brief 2002 stint as a vice president with the international public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, she resumed private practice while continuing to serve as a key public affairs consultant to the firm. She also is a consultant to the international public health policy firm Policy Wisdom, LLC.
Prior to establishing Harbin Strategies, she served as Practice Development Director for the law firm Gray Robinson, Director of Florida Public Affairs for Burson-Marsteller, and a lobbyist before all branches of Florida government with Spearman Management. Early in her career, she served as press aide to U.S. Senator Bill Nelson when he campaigned for governor, and managed the successful campaign of her mother, Patsy Kurth, to the Florida Senate.
Harbin holds a journalism degree from the University of Florida where she produced and anchored the Florida First newscast, wrote for The Independent Florida Alligator newspaper, was a contributing editor to Orange and Blue magazine, and worked for the Florida Today and The Bradenton Herald newspapers. An avid writer, her freelance articles and columns have appeared in Family Forum, Orlando, Sarasota, and Intermarket magazines; and the Tampa Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel newspapers.
As the parent of a child with developmental disabilities, Harbin was appointed and subsequently reappointed by then-Governor Jeb Bush to serve on the Florida Interagency Coordinating Council for Infants and Toddlers (FICCIT), a state board overseeing early intervention services for young children with developmental disabilities, and chaired its Public Affairs Committee.
She recently served on the Florida Department of Health Early Steps Sustainability Task Force, and now serves on the Sustainability Plan Implementation Committee. In addition, she has served on the Early Steps’ Service Coordination Workgroup, and on the department’s Task Force on Communication Delay Eligibility. She has served on the boards of Raising a Healthy Child, the Pace Center for Girls of Orange County and the Central Florida Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association.
