NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Council of Public Relations Firms (Council), the industry’s trade association, announced today the election of its new officers and directors.
The new Chair of the Council is Christopher Graves, Global Chairman of Ogilvy Public Relations. Newly promoted to chairman at Ogilvy PR, Graves served for five years as its Global CEO and for five as its Asia-Pacific Regional CEO. He is a three-time Atticus Award winner from WPP (top award for research and writing), a contributing author to three recent books from McKinsey, and serves on several boards and foundations (Institute for Public Relations; the UN Women Private Sector Leadership Advisory Council; Opportunity Nation; Caring For Cambodia). Prior to joining Ogilvy, he worked for 23 years in the news business (Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, CNBC) and rose to the level of head of network news and programming for CNBC in Asia and then in Europe.
Joining Graves as executive officers are Aaron Schoenherr (Greentarget) as secretary and Bryan Harris (Taylor) as treasurer.
The Council also announced the election of its new board members, all CEOs/Principals of their firms: Virginia Devlin (Current), Carrie Jones (JPA Health Communications), Daryl McCullough (Citizen Relations), Todd Hansen (O’Malley Hansen Communications), Ron Sachs (Sachs Media Group) and Karen van Bergen (Porter Novelli).
Continuing directors are: Matthew Harrington (Edelman), Aaron Kwittken (Kwittken + Company Worldwide), Maureen Lippe (Lippe Taylor), Jason Mandell (LaunchSquad), Paul Newman (MSLGROUP), Marian Salzman (Havas PR), Dave Senay (FleishmanHillard), C. Renzi Stone (Saxum) and Mark Thorne (Hill+Knowlton Strategies).
“I am so thrilled and honored,” remarked Graves, “to serve among the best and the brightest of our industry, and to do so at a time when the confluence of content, social, mobile and behavioral understanding makes what we do the center of the earned influence universe.”
“We appreciate outgoing Chair Dave Senay’s vision and commitment, and the dedication of the entire board,” said Kathy Cripps, President, Council of Public Relations Firms. “We look forward to starting our work with Chris. As our Critical Issues Forum Chair for the past two years, Chris has shown remarkable energy, passion and understanding of our industry. He is the perfect person to lead our organization into the future.”
The Council of Public Relations Firms is the trade association of America’s leading public relations firms. Its membership represents the premier global, mid-size, regional and specialty firms across every discipline and practice area. The Council’s mission is to advocate for and advance the business of public relations firms by building the market and the value of firms as strategic business partners. For more information about the Council, visit www.prfirms.org.
