PR Future, the USC Center for Public Relations Podcast

Melissa Waggener Zorkin on Finding your Purpose — And Leading With It

Episode Summary

Global CEO and founder of WE Communications Melissa Waggener Zorkin discusses how her agency helps their clients activate with purpose, and how she leads at WE with the voices of her diverse office front-of-mind. This discussion is part of our series reviewing the 2021 Relevance Report, available for free download at annenberg.usc.edu/relevance.

Episode Notes

Fulfillment and purpose: two things that we all search for throughout our lives, and maybe have been thinking more about lately in our new normal. And two things that Global CEO and Founder of WE Communications Melissa Waggener Zorkin thinks about constantly. Leading with purpose and fulfillment in mind, Melissa and her agency have built strong, authentic campaigns over the years for big companies like Microsoft and Khan Academy. 

 

Melissa's secret to success? Listening intently to internal voices and connecting everything they do to an organization's innate purpose. In this episode, Melissa will discuss the importance of having a diverse employee base and the increased need for focusing on diversity retention in the communications industry, what it means to find your organization’s purpose, and how to tie it to your campaigns to create authentic content that resonates with your audiences. 

 

This discussion is part of our series reviewing the 2021 Relevance Report, a collection of essays from industry leaders which explores how to communicate with American consumers during this unprecedented time of COVID-19 and heightened political divide. Download your copy of the 2021 Relevance Report today at annenberg.usc.edu/relevance.

 

Featuring:

Melissa Waggener Zorkin (@melissawz), Global CEO and founder of WE Communications

 

Host:

Fred Cook (@fredcook), Chairman of Golin, a global PR firm. Author of “Improvise - Unorthodox Career Advice from an Unlikely CEO” and Director of the USC Center for Public Relations

 

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