This month’s PR Profiles guest thought he was going to end up pursuing biology. “It wasn’t until later that the sales personality in me steered me in the direction of communications and ultimately public relations,” says Tony DeFazio, founder of Sustainable PR. Now,...
Listen to your instincts, advises Jen Kelley Young, Senior Vice President at CURA Strategies in her interview for Agility’s latest PR Profiles episode. “A lot of times you want to dive right in, whether it's to start a new client relationship or to address an issue...
Setting realistic client expectations, especially around earned media, isn’t the easiest conversation to have—but it is a necessary one. “Before we decide to collaborate together, I want prospective clients to feel comfortable with my approach,” says Justin Goldstein,...
Pragya Dubey, Vice President of Global Services & Media Analytics at Agility PR Solutions could have been an astrophysicist. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Mumbai, Pragya had a decision to make: pursue an MBA or pursue an MSc in...
“The best thing about being in PR is you can change the conversation,” says Abbi Whitaker, President of The Abbi Agency in Reno, Nevada. Recognized as a 2020 Top Woman in PR by PRNEWS, Abbi started her agency almost 14 years ago after noticing a void for “really...
Karen Swim is a true PR powerhouse, no doubt about it. Not only does she run her successful virtual agency, Words for Hire, but she also has, “the joy and pleasure of leading a professional organization for independent PR practitioners” called Solo PR Pro. For her,...
“I started my career in the boiler room of a small financial services practice making over a hundred cold calls most days,” says Brian Hart, the founder of Flackable, an award-winning PR agency in Philadelphia. For a recent college grad who had just interned at a...
“When I was a kid, I would go to the library and get stuck in there,” says Michelle Egan from her office in Anchorage, Alaska. “Not because I would sit down and read a book, but because I would go from section to section, learn a little something about each and...
“It’s been ingrained in me to watch the news early in the morning,” says Annie Scranton, founder and president of Pace Public Relations and host of the PR Pace podcast. “Without reading and consuming the news voraciously I wouldn’t be able to do my job.” Before she...
“My story is a story,” says Melissa Agnes with a laugh, recalling how she, an entrepreneur since she was 21, got into crisis communications. Thirteen years ago, Melissa had no idea she would one day be an expert in crisis comms—or that it was even a field she could...
Before he was the president of a successful PR agency celebrating 30 years in San Francisco, David Landis was a classical pianist. It seems only right then that some of Landis Communications Inc. (LCI)’s first clients were in the entertainment industry. While the...
Gini Dietrich has been part of a lot of PR projects, but she may be best known for the PESO model and Spin Sucks, a blog, podcast and book. Spin Sucks was launched as an experimental agency blog for Arment Dietrich back in 2006, but quickly progressed from agency blog...