It is hard to believe I will celebrate my 20th anniversary as a PR professional. Memories of 1986 are now flashing before me as I remember walking into the offices of Dorf & Stanton Communications (now Weber/Shandwick) as a shy Baruch College senior to start my one and only PR internship that eventually led to a full time job and the best jumpstart to my career.

Fast forward to 2006 and I am now a PR veteran applying my industry knowledge to nurture our up and coming PR pros here at Springboard. Throughout my quite colorful PR career, I always valued the importance of trust. Trust -- with clients, colleagues and even family -- doesn’t simply occur overnight. It is an expectation that must be developed and nurtured consistently over time.

Having been on both sides of the agency/client relationship, I always tried to impress upon the importance of trusting the PR function, especially with respect to expectations and results. Early in my career, I was a sponge absorbing as much information on technology, and the marketing of that technology, on behalf of my clients. Building up my expertise and knowledge base contributed to gaining the trust of both my internal and external clients.

When I stepped out from the agency side of public relations and became manager of corporate communications at Franklin Electronic Publishers in the early 90s, I engaged a public relations agency headed by a former colleague with whom I worked at Golin/Harris. When I engaged that agency at Franklin, it brought me back to my short stint at GCI where I replaced a guy who ultimately became my client. As a client, he became a total tyrant and had much glee with abusing his position of power. I made a commitment to myself never to go down that path at Franklin. The lesson learned: defining and demanding results is very important, but managing PR resources in a tyrannical way does not make people work harder for you – it is actually counterproductive!

My agency smarts helped me to truly value the importance of public relations from strategizing, planning and executing in tandem with a strong PR partner that I viewed as an extension of my internal communications department. It was a formula that led to much success for both my agency and internal marketing department during my tenure at Franklin.

As I celebrate my third year at Springboard, I am instilling that same philosophy and truly solidifying our role as marketing partners for our clients -- that is evident with many of our clients whom entrust in us their marketing and PR strategy, some who have done so for more than 10 years. In fact, we have built such good trust with our clients that those who leave us typically move onto other companies that have brought us in as their trusted PR partner. When you are viewed in this light, it can only mean trust well earned for a job well done.

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