Wiley has taught thousands to write clearly and concisely. His fast-moving class calls on his 35 years as a PR agency owner, consultant and journalist.

Wiley spent the first decade of his career as a newspaper reporter and editor, rising quickly to become executive editor of a mid-sized Pennsylvania daily paper when he was just 30 years old. His peers named the paper the best of its size in the state and it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Wiley left daily journalism for a career in public relations. At first, he focused on health care, but a stint at a Seattle PR firm gave him a chance to taste other types of clients. He left that firm to start his own agency.

Over the years, he built The Wiley Brooks Company into a successful niche firm. It became well known up and down the West Coast for managing high-profile crises and potentially awful issues. It was Wiley whom Jack in the Box turned to when children started dying after eating its burgers. Mattel tapped Wiley to manage PR for what was the largest contaminated drinking water crisis in U.S. history. Along the way, Wiley managed a host of other crises, ranging from cruise ship accidents to sexual misconduct by clergy.

In 1999, Wiley did something daring and bold. He founded a dotcom company that grew so rapidly that he moved nearly his entire agency staff into it. TellThemNow.com made it easy for someone reading the news on a website to send an email message to almost any newsmaker in the story. Despite the company’s meteoric rise and big name affiliates, it died in the dotcom funding collapse of late 2000.

Since 2001, Wiley has focused on consulting, though he chose to veer away from relying on crises. Wiley has always loved to write, but had found being an agency owner rarely gave him the chance to do much writing. So, he set out to change that. He has since enjoyed some great writing jobs, including a couple that took him to other parts of the world.