Marian Salzman: PRWeek PR Professional of the Year
Marian Salzman has many accomplishments she can be proud of – few people in her position can mention as many successes with their work, great part of which has always been in support of various humanitarian projects. President of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, and a hard, dedicated worker, Marian Salzman sees the PRWeek PR Professional of the Year award as a recognition of the whole team that served with her during incredible CSR projects last year:
“Although I am singled out, this is a team sport. It’s been fun, and we’re just rounding the first threshold in a marathon. I also want to acknowledge all the victims of tragedies—Haiti’s earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—that have led to incredible CSR projects we’ve had the opportunity to take on and been able to differentiate ourselves with. And for me, it’s the strangest thing to realize that four years ago I was struggling with a brain tumor diagnosis, three years ago reinventing myself in a PR agency and today carrying home the trophy of a lifetime.”
A trophy of a lifetime, indeed, but by the look of things, just the beginning. This award confirms Salzman’s efforts and work, and crowns the accomplishments of only one year. The Sisterhood, an agency-within-an-agency and social media lab that was launched after groundbreaking research about the communications and consuming habits of teenage girls, is perhaps Salzman’s most noteworthy project – and a 2011 finalist for PRWeek’s Innovation of the Year.
Other PR campaigns led by Salzman include Yele Haiti, the NGO that Wyclef Jean founded and for which ERWW PR served as agency of record for most of 2010; and Warner Chilcott, the respiratory portfolio of a major pharmaceutical company and software to enhance reading comprehension for the visually impaired.
She’s a bit of a legend, with honorable mentions all over the world, a Huffington Post, CNBC.com, PRWeek and PR News columnist, an Adage contributor, and media darling – a powerful figure, and perhaps the first in years who genuinely deserves the prize.
Salzman graduated from Brown University with top honors and studied sociology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is the author or co-author of 15 books on topics ranging from current affairs to the commercial workplace, including the bestseller Next Now: Trends for the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and is currently working on a book based on her four-part Huffington Post blog series about brain injuries, recovery and creativity.
