Arthur W. Page Society

Ofield Dukes was a brilliant communications strategist and one of the most influential racial justice leaders of the 20th century. Last September, he was posthumously inducted into the Page Hall of Fame. As we celebrate Black History Month, we hear from those who knew and loved Mr. Dukes about his storied life and career and how he changed the industry and the world for the better.

In a world of ever-increasing uncertainty, the importance of the communications function is only growing. In this episode, we are reviewing Edelman’s new report, The Future of Corporate Communications, to see what trends might persist into 2022 and beyond. Our guests are Edelman’s Jim O’Leary, U.S Chief Operating Officer and Dave Samson, Vice Chairman of Corporate Affairs.

Jim Hackett, former President and CEO of Ford, wants you to think outside of the (glove)box and look at the world in a new way. In this conversation from our Annual Conference, Jim speaks with Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide, about how design thinking helped Ford pivot to the future, using new frameworks to upend the status quo.

Every year, Page teams up with the Institute for Public Relations to hold a student case study competition. The winners are chosen by a panel of some of the most prolific communicators in the world. This year’s winning case examined Delta Air Lines' early decision to require masks on flights, the ways they used communications to effectuate that policy, and its step to use the "no fly list" as a tool to enforce compliance.

Heineken’s Chief Transformation & Corporate Affairs Officer, Stacey Tank, recently rejoined the company to spearhead its “Evergreen” growth strategy. What’s on tap in this episode is an in-depth look at how the company is transforming its operations and Stacey’s role in building its sustainable future, giving new meaning to “drink responsibly.”

Carmella Glover, president of the Diversity Action Alliance and director of DE&I at Page stopped by the podcast for a conversation on what Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday means for all Americans and how business leaders can use this opportunity to help build an equitable future. 

As the world grappled with the hardships of COVID-19, Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO of Hyatt, struggled balancing his personal grief with the harsh business realities of the pandemic. Leaning into his empathy, Hoplamazian transformed Hyatt’s culture, implementing new policies and technology to support employee mental health and well-being.

Roger Ferguson’s departure from TIAA in March of this year leaves the number of Black CEOs on the Fortune 500 list at four - less than 1%. At last year’s Page Annual Conference, we were fortunate to speak with Ron Williams, the former CEO of Aetna, and now CEO and Chairman of RW2 Enterprises. Ron shared some of the lessons from his experience as a Black CEO and what companies should be doing to ensure enterprise leadership is more diverse.

We pull the thread on a story about a group of leaders and socially-conscious shareholders that waged a proxy battle against legacy powerbrokers of a Japanese megacorporation, challenging traditional notions of where power lies. Jin Montesano takes us through this fascinating story from her company.

Every year, Page teams up with the Institute for Public Relations to hold a student case study competition and the winners are chosen by a panel of some of the most prolific communicators in the world. This year’s winning case study examined the controversial decision by Dick’s Sporting Goods to discontinue the sale of guns in many of their stores, and the outcomes that followed. 

Authentic Purpose goes beyond products, policies and public advocacy - it is the ethos that companies like Patagonia use to guide their business decisions, and as it turns out activism is good for business. In this episode, we speak with Corley Kenna, the Director of Global Communications and Public Relations at Patagonia, analyzing how the CCO role is well-positioned to connect different functions to align a company behind a cause.

In this episode, we bring you a conversation between Alan Murray, CEO of Fortune, and Page President Roger Bolton. Having known each other for decades, the two discuss the economic outlook in a pandemic crisis, the progress of stakeholder capitalism, employee mental health and the future of journalism. The discussion took place during our 2020 Page Spring Seminar.

Page Chair Charlene Wheeless has been convening conversations among our members recently to share ideas about the concrete steps that they can take to address systemic racism within their organizations and across business and society, an issue on which she has been a fierce advocate throughout her career. In this podcast she speaks about what's happening, what needs to be done about it and how CCOs can lead the charge.

Carrying on our series on COVID-19 and its implications, in this episode we speak with Whitney Eichinger, Managing Director Culture & Engagement at Southwest Airlines. We explore how an essential business with a strong culture of employee inclusion can leverage that to support the company through this crisis.

Continuing our series on the COVID-19 crisis and its implications, many companies are now looking to the future, including when and how employees will return to workplaces. Bob Feldman, Vice Chair of ICF Next, explores the question of how we get back to work, from implementing policies and guidelines that ensure workplace safety to the broader, potentially lasting impact on corporate culture.

Continuing our focus on organizations’ response to this pandemic, Pablo Jimenez, Global Vice President, Reputation & Communications at AB InBev, shares the challenges and opportunities that come with a global business whose operations are deeply connected to local communities. Pablo reminds us that Comms is a two-way function that needs to balance speed, accuracy and responsiveness, be sensitive to local context while maintaining a global coherence, and help the organization marshal its resources to help where the world needs it.

Given the enormous impact of Coronavirus on companies, we are shifting gears for the next few episodes. Page has been convening its members to share knowledge and best practices in these uncharted territories. We will be bringing you insights from a few of our members with a first-hand look at how they are helping their organizations grapple with these circumstances.  In our first episode in this series, Kati Everett, the CCO at Novant Health, shares with us how her team is helping the people at the front lines of this battle, at a time when their business priorities have shifted entirely. The role of the communications team has never been more central to the organization when having the latest information saves lives. She ends by sharing advice for CCOs navigating this crisis, keeping in mind that there will be a time when we are post-crisis.

History may not always repeat itself but it sure can rhyme. As the world grapples with populism, income inequality and a revolt by a disenfranchised working class, we can see now how the 1920s, with similar circumstances, brought about a progressive movement and spawned the field of public relations. On this episode, Rob Flaherty, chairman of Ketchum, shares his thoughts on how the world we live in today must heed important lessons from a century ago. His big two calls for today’s CCOs – step up to the evolving role of business in society, and commit to CommTech as a central aspect of the future of our profession.

Last week, Harold Burson passed away at age 98. Harold was a larger-than-life icon of public relations - he’s the Founding Chairman of Burson-Marsteller, a predecessor firm to Burson Cohn & Wolfe, he covered the Nuremberg Trials as a cub reporter after serving during WWII and he’s the author of one of the PR industry’s most seminal works, The Business of Persuasion.  To commemorate him, we are republishing a past podcast featuring Harold’s conversation with Becky Edwards, now CCO of Schneider Electric, at the 2018 Page Spring Seminar. Harold explains why he was bullish on the future of the communications, his roundabout path into the profession, and how the digital era has and will continue to reshape it.  We've also published a handful of retrospectives on Harold to the PageTurner blog. Former colleagues and friends such as Roger Bolton (Page), Bill Nielsen (Johnson & Johnson), Carol Cone (On Purpose), Bob Feldman (ICF Next), Bill Wohl (United Rentals) and Herbert Heitmann (Karaktero) have contribute

As The New CCO wraps up 2019, we sit down with Mike Wing, the lead writer of Page’s most seminal research reports, to discuss the common threads of the CCO role from our first publication in 2007 to the present.  Mike’s been helping define Page’s perspective on the transformation of the CCO for over a decade. Most recently, he penned The CCO as Pacesetter, our report on the state of the CCO role and its way forward. Having surveyed a broad swath of Page membership and their teams, along with his years working alongside Jon Iwata at the head of IBM’s communications organization, Mike has a distinct, hyper-aware perspective on the state of the function and how it must evolve.  Special thanks to Morning Consult and Rivet Smart Audio for their support throughout this past year.