Page Annual Conference, Halfmoon Bay, CA | October 2024
Wow. Uh, thank you Kelli for that gracious and generous introduction. I hope that after all these years of placing you at Warburg Pincus, you have forgiven us since recruited you away from Hill & Knowlton, where you now domicile again. So congratulations on a stellar career. Let me add that also, when my good friend Maril McDonald, when my good friend Maril MacDonald called me to tell me about this award, uh, I was, my first reaction wasn't humility, wasn't pride, it was surprise. Still no more surprise than I was 15 years ago when I was asked to join the Page Society. Both times I had a brief bout of imposter syndrome. I'm, I'm not a practicing communicator, I'm a headhunter, but it runs on me that the Page Society, things headhunters, are people too.
And the reality is, I, I want to especially point out that Tom Martin has been, uh, not only a good friend, a client and advocate, uh, as done spectacular work at the College of Charleston, but his kindness has always, he's been my best PR advocate. So thank you so much, Tom, for, for nominating me. I also wanna say that I, I, I wanted to mention Frank Ovaitt because Frank Ovaitt was the first person to invite me to be part of an organization that you guys are part of and that recruiters weren't, and that was IPR. But it dawned on me that it was Mark Wiener that actually nominated me to be part of IPR. And Frank and I had known each other from a professional relationship. And Frank welcomed me on that note of gratitude. I would like to recognize a few people, you get the drift.
Some are here, some are not. Either way, I'd like to share some moments of pride and enjoy with them. Because without their friendship, love, and support, there isn't any way I would be here this evening, wouldn't have had the career that I've had. Let me start by thanking my wife, Doreen. I'm thrilled to say she was sitting here beside me. She is sitting here beside me tonight, as she has done for 41 wonderful years with grace and dignity. Let me tell you a little story, about Doreen. She's nervous now. She's very nervous. Now, about 30 years ago - mentioned 41 years of marriage - about 30 years ago I was getting ready for a business trip out here. We live, we live in New York, and I was going to be gone for a couple of weeks and Doreen was wrestling our, our two daughters, uh, who were very young at the time.
And I glanced up from the suitcase I was packing and I said, I feel so badly about the fact that I'm leaving you to take care of these two and that, you know, I'm not gonna be back for 10 days, two weeks. And her comment to me was, we'll be here when you get home. Thank you Doreen for saying that, for meaning that and for being you then and now. There is no me without us. Now, she's choked up, up next, and I plead with Roger about this, don't count this toward my seven minutes, um, is I'd like to talk about my good friend and fellow honoree, Gary Sheffer. A few years ago, PR Week published a story on the number of Fortune 500 CCOs who started their careers at ge. When the story came out, Gary called me and said, I don't know if you've seen this piece, but you should be very proud.
What he didn't say and probably didn't need to say, was we had placed over 20 people in marketing and communications at ge. But Gary, that classy gesture meant the world to me just as sharing the, sharing, sharing the stage with you here tonight was you've been a good friend, a valued colleague. Lemme tell you another story about Gary Sheffer. Gary Sheffer and I share a love of the New York Yankees deal with it. Fernandez too, by the way. Anyway, several times I invited Gary to be my guest at a Yankee game and several times Gary said, no can do. You're a vendor. I can't, can't do that. Now, he was the only one that ever said that to me. I guarantee he. So, but years later, he and his son Mark and I went to a Yankee game and we had a terrific time and we speak of it all the time.
In fact, he mentioned, again, I apologize for the baseball, uh, story here, but he mentioned this week and a text to me said, tonight we get to be Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. So I dunno who's who, but we a few years from that over lunch... remember lunch? Lunch used to be a thing. I used to do it a lot. I was surprised again when the Bloomberg chairman Peter Grauer told me, bill, your business model is flawed. Before I could think of anything to say, he said, because the people you place stay so long that by the time they start a search for their replacement, no one remembers that you put them there in the first place. Is Doug Pinkham here? Yeah. All right. You can tell that story at the bar afterwards. Speaking of successors, I really wouldn't be here tonight if it wasn't for my successor, Jessamyn Katz.
I wouldn't have dreamed of leaving Heyman Associates without complete confidence that I was leaving the firm in her capable hands. She's a terrific leader, a great friend, and she's done wonderful things for the profession in a short period of time. I'd also like to recognize two of Justin and my colleagues who are not here tonight. Lisa Ryan and Maryanne Rainone for their longtime support and leadership. Now Roger, now Roger Bolton, over the course of his tenure at Page Roger has done more than anyone to make this organization more diverse, more global and outward and forward looking. Thank you from all of us. Roger, I only wish you the best and my hope is that you will never miss as Cincinnati Reds fantasy camp for the rest of your career. I also wanna recognize my two friends that, that Kelli referred to my business partners now, Bob Feldman and Don Spetner, when we founded FHS Capital about five years ago, to invest our knowledge, experience and capital. Does that work out Okay? Knowledge, experience, and capital in communication startups with the potential to transform the industry.
Bob just had as we speak, uh, kidney stone surgery in Stanford Hospital. He's supposed to be here tonight and my good friend Don Spetner is here with me. So, uh, thank you for your friendship and partnership and uh, we certainly miss Bob. I would like to give Bob a little bit more of a shout out for putting me on a path that still makes me wonder if I'll ever truly retired. Since I announced a year ago that I was passing the baton to Jessamyn. I can honestly say that the work I've been doing, since leaving Heyman Associates is the most important work I've ever done. And let me explain. Let's first start with the Dialogue Project first. The Dialogue Project. Where as you, many of you know, well, first let me, let's lemme start this way. Some of you attended the Page meeting five years ago in Boston when Bob Feldman actually was received this award. That night, he turned what could have been a safe speech into a bold call to action for all of us in this room and in that room then and in our industry.
His warning was not only precedent, but even more timely. What Bob did, what did Bob tell us five years ago that the gravest threat to our society and our profession is political, polarization. He described the state of public discourse as deeply disturbing. He spoke about how media landscape is fragmenting into a toxic stew of sound bites, echo chambers and conspiracy theories. He said that sent up that urgent smoke signal in the fall of 2019. How could we have known just a few months later, the pandemic would so quickly devolve into a case study and how polarization poisons. Remember lockdowns mask mandates, closing schools and houses of worship, the gap between those that worked at home and those that were working on Zoom, how that tore our social fabric? Then after the George Floyd murder prompting protests, counter protests came the contested 2020 election. All those traumatic events unfolded as the Dialogue Project found a home at Duke University. Today, a vibrant think tank. The Dialogue Project is making tangible contributions to soothing our trouble waters. Its research has shown the moderate middle has a very vocal voice and is an important constituency for us to consider with our help. Fundamental human decency can and must cut through the clutter and noise, more dialogue, less shouting, more listening. Thank you Bob, and I hope you're feeling better.
Next, The Conversation. Many of you are familiar with The Conversation in the spring of 2020, as the pandemic locked down our community of communicators in our homes and our bedroom offices, I got a call from Jane Randel, the former head of communications for Kate Spade. Today, Jane is a sought after consultant in domestic violence and social issues for clients such as NASCAR and the NFL. Our discussion that night sparked one of those cathartic pandemic experiments. We formed a cohort of committed connected communicators looking for an antidote to isolation and burnout. One of those cohorts, and I know you're over there someplace, was the then Chair of Page, Charlene Wheeless. I thank the group that helped us start that. The conversation was and is an exciting, engaging, and informative forum for expertise, information, and a refuge from disinformation like the Dialogue Project. We took the view that a real discussion requires a willingness for all parties to be exposed to ideas that challenge their established beliefs.
If there was one tagline for the conversation, which we hear a lot from people, is I learned something there I couldn't have learned anywhere else. I thank those people that helped us start that and help us continue it. In January of 2021 with vaccines on the horizon and the end seemingly in sight, we had invited the CEO of a rapid testing company, the chief virologist from MIT and the head of, uh, the chief medical officer from Moderna to brief us on global vaccine progress. That session was scheduled for January 7th, 2021. That morning I had the unenviable task of calling these three generous people and telling them we kind of need to move in a different direction. And one of our cohort was able to convince Tom Friedman to address the group. So we discussed what had happened in Washington D.C. Day earlier, and it was an extremely lively discussion as you might expect.
Finally, the Eisenhower Institute. Some of you know me for a while, know of my deep devotion to my alma mater Gettysburg College. Most of you don't know that. Of all the executive searches I conducted over my 40 year career, none was more meaningful than the search that Heyman Associates conducted for a new executive director of Gettysburg College's renowned Eisenhower Institute. Part of the significance of that, by the way, was this was not a communicator, but this was somebody that would be running a public affairs think tank. The Eisenhower Institute honors the memory of a soldier and statesman who dedicated his life to freedom, peace, and the fight against totalitarianism. In his humble way, I like to refer to his civil approach as the middle way. I like that. I like that better than nonpartisan, bipartisan, I like the middle way. And that spirit, the institute's mission is to train the next generation of public policy leaders to place the highest priority on learning to understand and respect people from other points of view, other company, countries, and other cultures.
As we set our search out for a new head, it was really important that we found somebody who was a proven leader with gravitas and independence, and also somebody who could be objective and bipartisan. That's a lot, that's . And by the way, the president of the college said to me, make sure you just don't round up a bunch of lefties. So we were able to, uh, we were able to. We recruit a woman by the name of Tracie Potts, who is a distinguished journalist, had a longtime NBC anchor, and she's taken the Institute to new heights and had the extreme good judgment to invite me to serve on the board of the Eisenhower Institute, which I wish I do proudly.
All these public interest entities embody the page principles in their own way. Although, Page never wrote them down. He lived them every day. Many of us learned the hard way that telling the truth can be stressful and risky, and even at times, professionally suicidal. Still history and experience have taught us time and again, that if we don't take the first Page Principle seriously, the rest don't much matter. Arthur Page believed business should say what they do, and do what they say. Before going Corporate, he worked in government as a proud propagandist during World Wars I and II, and became a close friend and trusted advisor to Dwight Eisenhower. Page said, operating a business in a democracy means operating in the public interest. If we succeed, we'll be helping to make a better country for all of us to live in and better life. For us all. We should all be proud of being in this profession and being part of this organization. And again, I can't thank you enough for inviting me to be here tonight.
Thank you.