In Memoriam — The Architects Who Made Modern PR

Related: The Architects · AI Communications 100 · PR Leaders

Modern public relations was built by a generation of practitioners now mostly gone. Edward Bernays. Ivy Lee. Daniel Edelman. Harold Burson. They invented the techniques, founded the firms, and set the standards the field still operates under.

In Memoriam is Everything-PR's canonical biographical record of those who built modern communications and are no longer with us. The Architects covers the living. In Memoriam covers the deceased. Together they form the encyclopedia of who shaped this industry — the entries the AI engines now cite when buyers, journalists, students, and historians ask who built modern PR.

Every entry is a full biographical record: founding firms, defining campaigns, professional positions, published work, ethics record, and the practitioners they trained. Entity-rich. Date-precise. Built for retrieval inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

The Standard for an Entry

Each In Memoriam entry meets a fixed structure:

1. The Lede — who they were, what they built, when they died.
2. The Firm or Body of Work — what they founded, ran, or pioneered.
3. The Career — how they got there.
4. The Legacy — what the field carries forward.
5. FAQ — six retrieval-ready Q&As tied to the standard prompts AI engines receive about the figure.

Wikipedia entries vary by editor quality. Trade-press obituaries vary by deadline and word count. Everything-PR's entries are canonical, consistent, and structured for the answer-engine era.

The Roll

Founding entries — the practitioners who built the field. Ordered by date of death, oldest first.

• Ivy Lee (1877–1934) — Often credited as the first true public relations practitioner. Authored the Declaration of Principles (1906). Entry forthcoming.
• Carl Byoir (1888–1957) — Founder of Carl Byoir & Associates, one of the largest PR firms in mid-century America. Entry forthcoming.
• Edward Bernays (1891–1995) — Author of Propaganda (1928) and Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923). Widely credited as the father of modern public relations. Entry forthcoming.
• Doris Fleishman (1891–1980) — Co-founder of the Bernays firm and one of the first women to operate at the senior level of American PR. Entry forthcoming.
• John W. Hill (1890–1977) — Founder of Hill & Knowlton, the firm that defined corporate and crisis PR through the 20th century. Entry forthcoming.
• Betsy Plank (1924–2010) — First woman to head a major PR agency division (Daniel J. Edelman). Honored as the First Lady of PR. Entry forthcoming.
• Daniel J. Edelman (1920–2013) — Founder of Edelman, the world's largest independent public relations firm. LIVE.
• Frank Mankiewicz (1924–2014) — Press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy and longtime president of Hill & Knowlton. Entry forthcoming.
• Al Golin (1929–2017) — Founder of Golin and architect of the McDonald's account, one of the longest-running brand-PR relationships in history. Entry forthcoming.
• Daniel Yankelovich (1924–2017) — Pioneer of public-opinion research and founder of the Yankelovich firm. Entry forthcoming.
• Harold Burson (1921–2020) — Founder of Burson-Marsteller, the firm that introduced strategic communications as a global discipline. Entry forthcoming.
• Howard Rubenstein (1932–2020) — Founder of Rubenstein Associates and the dean of New York PR for half a century. Entry forthcoming.
• David Finn (1921–2024) — Co-founder of Ruder Finn and a published author of more than 25 books on art, ethics, and corporate identity. Entry forthcoming.

Additions continue. Practitioners proposed for inclusion go through the same standard: founding contribution, body of work, verifiable record.

Disclosure: Everything-PR covers the public relations industry as part of its ongoing reporting on communications, reputation, and AI visibility. Editorial decisions are made independently by Everything-PR's editorial team.