Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm, will speak at the convocation ceremony for Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on Saturday, May 14, at noon in the Carrier Dome.
Under Edelman’s tenure as CEO, the firm has grown from $100 million and 900 employees in 1996 to $531 million and 3,700 employees in 2010. With 53 wholly-owned offices worldwide, the firm was most recently named PRWeek’s 2011 “Large PR Firm of the Year”—for the fourth time in six years—and Advertising Age’s “2010 A List Agency,” one of its “2010 Best Places to Work in Marketing and Media” and its “Top Ranked PR Firm of the Decade.”
Edelman is widely regarded as one of the industry’s most influential and prominent leaders. He has extensive experience in marketing and reputation management, with current assignments for the National Dairy Council, Hewlett-Packard, McGraw-Hill and Scotts. He has also counseled several countries on economic development programs.
In 1999, he led the PR industry’s recognition of the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in society and has been an advocate for business to partner constructively with NGOs and government. He also created the Edelman Trust Barometer® to track the attitudes of opinion leaders toward business, government, media and NGOs worldwide in the wake of the anti-globalization movement in 1999-2000. The study has since become one of the industry’s signature pieces of intellectual property and is widely used by organizations and referenced in media, including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
His blog, 6 A.M., which launched in September 2004, was one of the first CEO blogs—the first in the PR industry—and currently receives more than 25,000 visitors each month. Edelman is also a leading advocate of ethical and transparent PR practices. The firm helped craft the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA) ethical guidelines and its Code of Conduct, helping establish guidelines for PR firms, particularly in developing markets around the world.
Edelman invests in the education of the next generation of PR professionals through the firm’s annual New Academic Summit, which began in 2005, by funding more than 100 leading academics from around the world to convene and discuss the latest digital trends with the firm’s key clients and experts.
He is an advocate for addressing societal challenges and for business to operate with a mission of profit with purpose—the responsibility to act in the interests of shareholders and society. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Ad Council, the Atlantic Council, the Children’s Aid Society, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the Gettysburg National Battlefield Foundation. He is a stakeholder of the Global Reporting Initiative and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Arthur Page Society, PR Seminar and the World Economic Forum, where he has been invited to present to the world’s political, business and media elite in Davos for the last 12 years about topics including corporate sustainability and public-private partnerships. He has also spoken on the NGO movement at several conferences, including the Institute of Social & Ethical AccountAbility and the Conference Board.
Edelman won the Silver Anvil, the highest award in the public relations industry, in 1981. He was named “Best Manager of the Year” by Inside PR magazine in 1995, and in 2006, he was awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year 2006-NY Metropolitan Area” by Ernst & Young. He was also PRWeek’s “Most Powerful PR Executive” in October 2008, for the second year in a row, and AdAge’s “Agency Executive of the Year” in January 2008. In 2010, he was recognized as one of “America’s Favorite Bosses” (#8) by Forbes.
Prior to becoming president and CEO, he served as president of Edelman’s U.S. operations, regional manager of Europe and manager of the firm’s New York office.
For more information about the Newhouse School Convocation, contact Susan Nash at (315) 443-5007 or sknash@syr.edu.
