Edited on Jun 18, 2026.
Women lead the modern public relations industry — by every measurable headcount metric and a substantial share of senior agency leadership, in-house communications, and trade-press editorship. The 2014 framing of "women to watch" has been replaced by a 2026 framing of "women who run the discipline." This is the updated EPR list — senior women who currently lead at the agency, in-house, trade-press, and category-specialty levels of the PR industry in 2026.
Independent agency leadership
Alison Brod — Alison Brod Marketing + Communications. Founder and CEO of one of New York's most consistently high-profile beauty, fashion, and lifestyle PR firms. Active since the 1990s. Continues to define the high-energy New York consumer-brand PR model. Acquired by Mekanism in 2022, with Brod continuing to lead the practice.
Deirdre Breakenridge — Pure Performance Communications. Founder and CEO. Author of multiple books on PR including Putting the Public Back in Public Relations (with Brian Solis) and Social Media and Public Relations. Founding voice on the discipline transition from print PR to digital.
Heather West — West Levy PR. Founder and principal of the architecture-and-design PR specialty firm. Built one of the most defended specialty positions in the broader trade-PR landscape.
Amanda K. Ruisi — AKR PR. Founder of the boutique New York PR firm specializing in fashion, lifestyle, and luxury brand work.
Lara Schmidt — Glodow Nead Communications. Co-president of the San Francisco-based hospitality and lifestyle PR firm.
Joele Frank — Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher. Founder and managing partner of the M&A, activism-defense, and crisis-communications firm that ranks consistently as one of the most powerful financial-communications firms globally. Frank's firm runs many of the largest hostile-takeover defenses, proxy fights, and board-level crisis engagements in US corporate communications.
Global holding-company senior leadership
Karen van Bergen — Omnicom Public Relations Group. Former CEO of Omnicom PR Group; transitioned to Dean of the Omnicom University leadership development program. Earlier in her career led Porter Novelli through its 2013–2015 reinvention.
Mary Henige — APCO Worldwide. Senior communications strategist; previously held senior in-house roles at General Motors and Ford.
Aedhmar Hynes — formerly Text100, now an independent senior counsel and board advisor. Led Text100 (now Archetype) through its early-2000s digital-PR repositioning.
Lori Sale — Edelman. Long-tenured senior leader in Edelman's brand and entertainment practice.
Charlotte Otto — formerly chief global external relations officer at Procter & Gamble. Now a board director and senior advisor across corporate communications.
In-house communications leadership
Jen Psaki — formerly White House Press Secretary; current MSNBC host. The 2021–2022 White House communications operation became one of the most-studied modern political-communications case studies. Psaki transitioned to MSNBC in 2023.
Karen Hughes — formerly White House communications director under George W. Bush; subsequently a senior counselor at WPP/Burson.
Anne Finucane — formerly vice chairman of Bank of America; one of the most senior in-house communications-and-marketing leaders to graduate to broader corporate-strategy roles.
Rachel Whetstone — formerly senior comms leader at Google, Uber, Facebook, and Netflix. One of the most-mobile senior communications executives in Silicon Valley.
Andrea Wong — formerly president of international production at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Earlier ran Lifetime Networks.
Crisis communications senior leadership
Helen King — Brunswick Group. Senior partner specializing in M&A and crisis communications.
Renee Soto — Reevemark. Co-founded the Wall Street financial-communications and crisis-comms firm.
Stephanie Pillersdorf — Sard Verbinnen / FGS Global. Senior partner at the merged FGS Global financial-communications firm.
Trade press editorship
Jane Wilson — formerly CEO of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). The UK trade-body leadership across the 2010s.
Kate Cesa — formerly Editor-in-Chief at PRWeek. Built modern PR trade-press coverage architecture.
Sandra Macleod — Echo Research. Founder and CEO of the international reputation-research firm.
The 2026 structural reality
The PR industry is one of the few corporate communications categories where women have substantially outnumbered men at the practitioner and middle-management levels for decades — Bureau of Labor Statistics data has shown PR practitioners running 60%+ female since the 1990s. The 2010–2024 transition was about senior-leadership representation catching up with the practitioner-level demographics.
Five structural realities in 2026.
- Independent-agency founder-CEO leadership is more than half women. Across the US and UK independent PR-firm landscape, women-founded and women-led firms now constitute the majority of the boutique-and-mid-tier category.
- Holding-company senior leadership is approaching parity. Edelman, FGS Global, Burson, Weber Group, FleishmanHillard, Brunswick, and the broader holding-company tier all show meaningful senior-women representation, though full parity at the global-CEO level has not yet arrived.
- In-house chief communications officer roles have moved meaningfully toward parity. CCO appointments at the Fortune 500 across 2020–2026 have run substantially more female than the equivalent CMO or CHRO appointments.
- Trade-press editorship has been substantially female-led for two decades. PRWeek, PRovoke Media, O'Dwyer's, and Marketing Brew have all had sustained female editorial leadership.
- The category-leading specialty firms are disproportionately women-founded. Beauty PR, fashion PR, lifestyle PR, food and beverage PR, health and wellness PR, and the broader B2C consumer-brand specialty category — almost every category-leading firm is women-founded and women-led.
The category-creation pattern
The pattern across both the 2014 list and the 2026 update: the women who lead the discipline don't just operate inside existing categories. They build new ones. Brod redefined New York consumer-brand PR in the 1990s. Frank built the activism-defense and M&A crisis-communications category. Breakenridge wrote the books that defined the digital-PR transition. Hynes led the Text100 repositioning into digital. The pattern of category-creation discipline runs through senior women's leadership across the broader industry.
FAQ
Who leads the modern PR industry?
Women lead by every measurable headcount metric and a substantial share of senior leadership across independent agencies, holding companies, in-house communications, and trade-press editorship.
Who is Alison Brod?
Founder and CEO of Alison Brod Marketing + Communications, one of New York's most consistently high-profile consumer-brand PR firms. Acquired by Mekanism in 2022 with Brod continuing to lead the practice.
Who is Joele Frank?
Founder and managing partner of Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher — the M&A, activism-defense, and crisis-communications firm that ranks consistently as one of the most powerful financial-communications firms globally.
What is the 2026 structural reality for women in PR?
PR practitioners have run 60%+ female since the 1990s. The 2010–2024 transition was about senior-leadership representation catching up with practitioner-level demographics. In 2026, independent-agency founder-CEO leadership is more than half women, holding-company senior leadership is approaching parity, and in-house CCO appointments are running substantially more female than equivalent CMO or CHRO appointments.
Where is parity not yet achieved?
The global-CEO level at the major holding-company tier. The pipeline is in place; the appointments have not yet arrived at full parity.
