Ragan’s High Ladies in Communications Awards is certainly one of our most prestigious packages, saluting the ladies who embody the previous, current and way forward for the self-discipline; whose improvements have the facility to form workplaces and worker expertise; and whose efforts attain throughout their organizations and much past.
Annually, we honor dozens of communicators, however solely three be a part of our Corridor of Fame. The inductees into the 2024 High Ladies in Communications Corridor of Fame aren’t simply professionals, however forces of affect that essentially uplift the best way we work together with and uplift each other. Their intensive expertise and unmatched experience set them aside as champions to be emulated.
This 12 months, Ragan is honored to induct:
Susan Donlan
Chief Communications Officer at KeyCorp
Marian Salzman
Senior Vice President & Chief Company Citizenship Officer, U.S., at Philip Morris Worldwide
Kathy Krenger
former Chief Communications Officer at The Kraft Heinz Firm
These leaders and the remainder of the High Ladies in Communications, Class of 2024, will likely be honored at a luncheon in New York Metropolis on Feb. 29, 2024. Learn on to study in regards to the monumental impression they’ve made on communications and the world.
Susan Donlan: The calm within the storm
Over the course of her profession, Susan Donlan’s affect and impression has blazed the path for ladies within the banking business, through which a overwhelming majority of management and board roles are nonetheless held by males.At the moment chief communications officer at KeyCorp, a monetary companies firm with property of roughly $189 billion and greater than 17,000 workers, Donlan launched her profession working with the federal government of Canada in analysis and worldwide coverage, in addition to advising a number of ministers. She went on to serve within the Canada Income Company and the Workplace of the Minister of Labor and Housing, laying the inspiration of her communications profession.
At T.D. Financial institution, Donlan used her means to construct rapport and relationships to lean additional into company communications, mastering inner and exterior communications, government communications, media relations and disaster communications whereas ascending by means of the ranks to the publish of vice chairman in 10 years.
“I’ve at all times valued the power to hear — actively hear,” Donlan instructed Ragan. “You study a lot once you hearken to how persons are saying issues, what they’re sharing with you and the way they really feel about it. It connects you together with your viewers and helps you perceive them. That makes you a greater communicator.”
In 2018, Donlan relocated to america to hitch KeyBank as chief communications officer in Cleveland, Ohio. As soon as there, Donlan made sweeping modifications to the company communications group, together with establishing a management group and affording senior members of her group with improvement and management alternatives. Since then, she has led the group by means of worldwide crises and historic challenges to the banking business.
One problem, after all, was the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit shortly after a CEO transition. Donlan developed a status for being the “calm within the storm,” steadily main her group by means of the pandemic whereas making certain all KeyBank stakeholders had been supported. Her efforts included a complete inner and exterior plan, client reduction, small enterprise and Paycheck Safety Program help and continued help locally.
Then got here the collapse of Silicon Valley Financial institution and Signature Financial institution in March 2023. The 2 largest financial institution failures since 2008 despatched shockwaves by means of the business, particularly for regional establishments like KeyBank. Donlan mobilized the group with an motion plan that equipped workers with important data, making certain that purchasers remained assured in KeyBank’s energy and stability. She additionally addressed quite a few media inquiries and positioned CEO Chris Gorman as KeyBank’s voice within the public.
“I’ve discovered how essential it’s to be the voice of calm inside the chaos — even when I’m not feeling that calm on the within,” Donlan stated. “Expertise has taught me to concentrate on how we transfer ahead and out of the disaster as a substitute of worrying about how we obtained there. There’s at all times time to replicate again and decide the best way to study from a state of affairs as soon as the disaster passes, not from a blame perspective, however from the angle of how we are able to do higher.”
An energetic participant in KeyBank’s formal mentoring program, Donlan is concerned within the Cleveland group, serving as a director on the Cleveland Museum of Pure Historical past Board and as a member of the Cuyahoga County Public Library Basis Board.
“The sphere has modified a lot since I started my profession,” she mirrored to Ragan. “The day of prose memos is lengthy gone — you want to have the ability to package deal your content material in small, digestible items, specializing in what you actually need the viewers to know. This could be a actual problem if you find yourself coping with complicated data — the power to synthesize complexity is a extra essential ability than ever for communicators.”
She advises different communicators to decelerate and take time to understand the place they’re and what they’re engaged on. “I used to be at all times in such a rush to get to the subsequent factor, like I used to be operating out of time,” she stated. “As a substitute of specializing in the subsequent alternative or position, now I actually attempt to take pleasure in all the issues I get to do and study day by day in my present position.”
Marian Salzman: Redefining the long run
Marian Salzman’s profession has at all times targeted on the long run — and he or she has persistently formed that future. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, when the web was nonetheless thought of the area of nerds, she based the world’s first cybersecurity consultancy — holding on-line focus teams by way of her startup, American Dialogue, also referred to as Cyberdialogue.
It’s no exaggeration to name her a cultural icon: she helped introduce the phrase “metrosexuality” to the world in 2003, sparking a worldwide media frenzy that finally resulted in “metrosexual” being named Phrase of the Yr.
“Folks radar issues so much,” Salzman instructed Ragan. “You’ll be able to accomplish something once you encompass your self with the perfect individuals, and once you work for and with people who find themselves smarter than you’re, and who share your dedication to nice work, and good enjoyable.”
And Salzman was a driving pressure behind #GivingTuesday, which inspires customers to offset the gluttony of Black Friday and Cyber Monday by serving to others and elevating tens of billions of {dollars} for group packages.
In a PR profession spanning three a long time, Salzman has served as CEO of Havas PR North America and chair of the Havas International PR Collective. In 2016 she moved to Philip Morris Worldwide (PMI) as senior vice chairman, world communications, to assist the corporate ship a smoke-free future.
Salzman guides PMI’s communications, media and different stakeholder engagement, forging productive alliances with NGOs, advocacy teams, policymakers and others. The top aim: making it simpler for grownup people who smoke to maneuver away from cigarettes and towards the higher science-based options now accessible.
Utilizing her world platform to fight misinformation, promote transparency and advance optimistic change, Salzman sparks conversations round essential points by way of her annual developments report, e-newsletter and PMI whitepapers — together with “Hate Is within the Air,” a report that dissects the drivers of hate and challenges firms to contribute to options.
She says curiosity and power are crucial abilities for communicators. “In case you aren’t in steady studying mode, you’ll shortly be left behind.” She lives out that recommendation herself: Salzman instructed Ragan that she was taking distant programs in authorities at Johns Hopkins College when the pandemic started. “This engagement gave me an entire lot of brainfood at a time when socialization was largely screen-based. I developed appreciable experience by going again to high school thirty-odd years after I had accomplished my formal schooling, and this made me a significantly better chief {and professional}. Studenting additionally knocked any vanity I had proper out of my system.”
As a commentator for a spread of worldwide and nationwide media retailers, Salzman has been featured on the BBC, NBC Information, Euronews, Sky Information and Bloomberg Radio, in addition to podcasts like Andrew Yang’s “Ahead.” She additionally repeatedly serves as a keynote speaker or panelist at such venues as GWPR VOICE, IAA Creativity 4 Higher Convention, College of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Enterprise and extra, and is the creator or co-author of 18 books.
Her recommendation to rising communicators: “Go overseas ceaselessly, work there feverishly, savor the friendships you made within the early days as a result of on the finish of a profession, it’s the expertise gathering, the human relationships, that carry you ahead and make you higher and extra in a position to face the challenges day-to-day. I additionally want I had develop into hooked on Pilates earlier, had embraced informal costume sooner, and would have dreamed as massive as life carried me. I at all times treasured the journey and picked bosses however by no means deliberate my profession, so I want I’d have recognized how fortunate I’d be — that will have made it simpler to calm down extra, to fret much less, and to trust that I’d by no means should compromise ‘me’ to succeed on the planet of ‘we.’”
Kathy Krenger: Iconic work for iconic manufacturers
In 2021, as Kraft Heinz was navigating some of the seen transformations of the last decade, its CEO determined to rebuild the corporate’s communications group from the bottom up. The individual he chosen to guide that group was Kathy Krenger, prompted by her stellar management as senior vice chairman of worldwide communications at Hyatt Accommodations Company, the place she guided the hospitality model by means of certainly one of its most difficult intervals amid pandemic lockdowns.
“I additionally watched as our total business collapsed in a matter of days,” Krenger stated of her expertise at Hyatt. “Even now, after I look again at how risky these first few months had been, I can hardly imagine it was actual. However the work we had been doing then was very important, crucial, even ground-breaking. Folks wanted our communications. They wanted the knowledge we created to outlive. And generally, the content material we had been growing was the one factor giving them hope. I do know this sounds just a little dramatic at this time, however in that instantaneous it was true.”
Constructing upon that have, Krenger joined Kraft Heinz as chief communications officer. Her process: Take what had been a small help perform inside the firm and create a best-in-class world heart of communications to function a strategic accomplice to the enterprise.
Two main initiatives show Krenger’s work boosting Kraft Heinz’s status:
From 2022 to 2023, Krenger’s group elevated annual company media protection outcomes by 265%. As well as, damaging information protection decreased to 9% (down from 31% in 2021), with 91% of media protection optimistic to impartial. Kraft Heinz ranked No. 28 within the 2023 Axios Harris “100 Status Rankings,” transferring up the listing from 2022 (and never making the listing in any respect in 2021).
And when workers reported feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from one another and their leaders. In response, Krenger’s communications group launched a brand new, mobile-enabled engagement platform, “The Vine,” to ship well timed and simply accessible data to the corporate’s 37,000 workers. Thus far, 97% of customers have engaged on the platform, and a latest worker survey confirmed that 80% of respondents have larger belief in data coming from the corporate.
She instructed Ragan that an underrated high quality for communicators to grasp is the power to “learn the room… and pivot the dialog primarily based on somebody’s preferences or want for readability. It’s simple to neglect that you might have spent the final two weeks targeted on this subject, however your viewers has not. They want time to soak up, ask questions and perceive how this dialog or subject impacts them and if you’ll be able to see their pause as a chance convey them alongside on the journey, be comforted by your understanding of all sides of the problem, you should have a accomplice and advocate reasonably than a detractor.”
She additionally touted the significance of writing abilities. “Now greater than ever, phrases matter,” she stated. “Linked to phrases, I imagine the power to affect is a crucial ability for communicators. Senior communicators will usually discover themselves being the one individual within the room with a opposite place. Having the ability to clarify your place with out sounding like a dream killer is essential.”
Because of Krenger’s efforts, the group at this time consists of 55 inner and exterior communication professionals throughout 15 international locations. The group manages inner and exterior communications media relations, government thought management, disaster and points administration, inventive content material technology and way more for the corporate.
“In an period the place every thing is about status administration, and the place there are pitfalls and alternatives at each flip, [Krenger] has elevated the communications perform to be a go-to accomplice to information firm actions that span far past conventional communications practices,” says Alex Abraham, vice chairman, world company communications and status administration at Kraft Heinz.
“Know your self so you’ll be able to imagine in your self,” Krenger advises. “I spent far an excessive amount of time lamenting as to why I wasn’t the star of or the perfect at X, Y or Z. I want I had actually leaned into my strengths extra, stopped worrying about different individuals and what they had been doing and discovered the best way to use my strengths as my superpower.”
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