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    Barbara Payne is President of Payne Communications, and has been a consultant in the northwest Houston community since 1978.  She started her public relations career with the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., the national trade association for the oil industry.  As API's Senior Manager of Public Communications, she was the oil industry’s spokesperson during the Arab Embargo on radio and television talk shows across the country.  
     Barbara came to Houston in 1975 as Director of Consumer Affairs for Gulf Oil Corporation, where she was responsible for developing and executing the corporation’s consumer affairs, customer relations, and energy education programs.  She testified before a U.S. Congressional Committee as Gulf’s representative opposing legislation to create a Federal Consumer Protection Agency.                          Barbara has been involved in a variety of community service organizations for the past 20 years, and she was recognized as 1996 Volunteer of the Year by an area Chamber of Commerce. 
     For more than a decade, she has been active in surface water and annexation issues (The Spirit of 1960, North Harris County Water Users Association). Today, she serves as Communications director for both the North and West Harris County Regional Water Authorities, and includes the Harris-Galveston Coastal Subsidence District and a growing number of water-related businesses and utility districts among her clients.  In 2004, Harris County Commissioners Court appointed Barbara to a two- year term as Commissioner, Harris County ESD #11 and she currently serves as President of that board.

        Nikki Wynn, Creative/Account Services, earned a degree in Journalism from Texas A&M University in 1994.  She began her career in the Public Relations department of WilTel Communications, working as part of a team responsible for writing, developing and coordinating the production of their internal and external publications.
         Nikki continued her career in 1997 at Ogilvy & Mather.  While working in their Houston office, she helped to create, coordinate and produce award-winning print, radio, point-of-sale and internet advertising for Shell Oil, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the YMCA, Houston.
       In 2000, Nikki moved to Ogilvy & Mather’s national headquarters in New York City, where she led account teams on such multi-million dollar clients as Enron, Goldman Sachs, Amtrak and AT&T Wireless. 
      After over three years in New York, Nikki returned to Houston to pursue her career as a freelance journalist and communications consultant with Payne Communications where she works primarily on communications programs for water, legal, and small business clients.