2020 has been the most chaotic year in modern history. Coronavirus infected our bodies and our minds. Quarantines drained our economy. Protests rocked our communities. Political warfare divided our nation.
As of this writing, more than 6 million Americans have contracted COVID-19. Nearly 200,000 have died. Fourteen million have lost their jobs. Forty-two percent of the labor force...
In 2020, our country faced many challenges: a global pandemic that claimed thousands of souls, chronic unemployment, a housing crisis and foreign adversaries threatening our constitutional democracy, just to name a few. The bright spot amidst the chaos has been the rise in youth activism and the arc of change it has inspired.
Recently we’ve seen America and its youth take to the...
Nearly 30 years ago when I was interviewing for my first PR job, the senior partner at J.D. Power and Associates asked me what the most important thing was that I learned in school. Without much hesitation I responded — “I learned how to learn.” He smiled and I was offered the job later that week.
To this day, I continue to believe that learning how to learn was by far the most...
When Warner Bros.Pictures released its romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians , Asian-American community leaders were elated. Nearly a quarter of a century had passed since Hollywood Pictures, a division of The Walt Disney Company, released the widely acclaimed full-length feature film The Joy Luck Club with a majority Asian-American cast. Crazy Rich Asians , along with a few other Asian-centric...
Last year, on any given night, more than half a million people in the wealthiest nation on earth had nowhere safe and secure to sleep.
Once an issue primarily confined to our cities’ most disadvantaged neighborhoods and their hardest-luck residents, homelessness can now be found just about everywhere in the United States. It’s one of the biggest — and certainly the most scandalous —...
In traveling to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela’s historic presidential win (I was an L.A. TV news reporter), I was captured by the warmth of that nation’s culture and people. So I stayed. I soon discovered I held many negative stereotypes about the continent and its peoples, false preconceptions mostly based on Western news reports, books and movies.
What a surprise! Not all...
Not long ago, I started thinking about the brands that mattered most to me as a kid: Levi’s, Cheetos, Toyota, Rossignol. What, I wondered, was their purpose? Why did they exist? What was their North Star?
The more I thought about these questions, the more obvious the answers seemed. Cheetos wanted to sell me cheese-flavored snacks. Levi’s wanted to sell me jeans. Coke wanted to sell...
Our fourth annual survey of the public relations industry, conducted earlier this year, revealed that a majority of global PR professionals predict the next few years will bring dramatic change to the communication industry. Eighty-three percent believe technological innovations will be a powerful driver of that change and most believe not all of it will be good.
As shared in the 2019...