Friday, June 11, 2021
Free Virtual Event: June 24 @ 6 PM EST
Hosted by: The George Washington University
Graduate School of Political Management
Overview
What are corporate leaders doing that government communicators can leverage to restore public confidence? This roundtable will share strategic communications tips and tactics that can be useful within the government communications infrastructure. A key focus of the conversation will be the steps necessary to rebuild trust.
Discussion topics include:
- Corporations do a better job in messaging than the government because they don’t “pander” to political interests.
- What are the lessons that corporations can share with the government?
- At the heart of this is the new corporate activism – Corporations have to engage to retain employees and enhance reputation — Financial Performance and Industry leadership is no longer enough.
- Gen Z is looking for companies that are talking the talk and walking the walk of sustainability and social activism.
- Can political leaders become trusted again?
The event will be moderated by Lawrence J. Parnell, M.B.A., an award winning Public Relations professional and academic who is an Associate Professor and director of the George Washington University Master’s in Strategic Public Relations program.
Guests
- Susan Del Percio, Founder, Susan Del Percio Strategies, MSNBC Political Analyst
- Daniel Webber, Regional President, Edelman Washington D.C.
- Additional guests tba
Susan Del Percio
Founder, Susan Del Percio Strategies, MSNBC Political Analyst
Susan Del Percio is a nationally recognized crisis communication expert, public affairs strategist and speaker. She is a political analyst for MSNBC, columnist for OZY media, and was a credited consultant for the award-winning HBO show, The Newsroom.
Dan Webber
Regional President, Edelman D.C.
Dan Webber is the President of Edelman’s Washington D.C. office where he leads 250+ professionals that help clients proactively tell their stories and navigate challenges around the world. In this role, Dan leads an integrated team of communications experts, including corporate, brand, public affairs, financial services, health, technology, energy, digital, public sector, creative and research subject matter experts in one of the largest hubs in Edelman’s global network.
Dan specializes in helping clients prepare for, navigate and overcome critical areas of risk, issues and crises. During the past 17 years at Edelman, Dan has worked with many different organizations to provide counsel and support related to reputation issues and crisis response. This includes activating rapid response incident response teams, developing training and simulations for several Fortune 500 companies, and standing up ad hoc triage teams for brand new clients that call with an incident with minimal planning or governance in place.
Prior to his role as Regional President, Dan served as Managing Director of the office and General Manager of the Corporate and Advisory team. During that time, the 50+ person C&A team provided companies and organizations strategic counsel specific to reputation matters, corporate storytelling, financial special situations, internal employee experience, organizational transformation, and navigating and planning for crisis and incident response.
Dan also previously served as General Manager of Edelman DC’s digital team. This was an 80+ person team that spearheaded digital programs and included a full suite of offerings from creative, development/technology, digital analytics, online measurement, search engine optimization, performance marketing, paid amplification, online influencer engagement, etc. Throughout the entirety of this role, Dan led the digital crisis team offering for Edelman and was a member of the firm’s data security and privacy group.
Dan is also currently serving his eighth year as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, teaching a graduate level class on Digital Crisis Management. He regularly speaks and lectures at several other universities, including The College of William and Mary, Northwestern University and Howard University. Before moving into public relations, Dan worked as a college administrator in student affairs. Webber attended The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where he earned his bachelor of business administration in marketing.
(Moderator) Lawrence J. Parnell, M.B.A.
Lawrence J. Parnell, M.B.A. is an award winning Public Relations professional and academic who is an Associate Professor and director of the George Washington University Master’s in Strategic Public Relations program. He has served in this role for 12 years and has built the GW Master’s program into one of the best known and admired programs in the US. Professor Parnell also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Communications at the GW School of Business.
He also operates Parnell Communications, a strategic communications and leadership training advisory firm. In this role he advises government, corporate and non-profit organizations on executive development and strategic communications.
Prior to coming to GW, he had a successful 32-year career in the private and public sector. He has worked in government, corporate and agency settings and in national, state and local political campaigns. He was recognized as PR Professional of the Year (2003) by PR Week and was named to the PR News Hall of Fame in 2009. The GW Master’s program was named the “Best PR Education Program” for 2015 by PR Week.
He is a frequent author and speaker on communications strategy, crisis and issues management, leadership skills and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at industry conferences and universities around the world. He is quoted often on communications management and crisis communications by the national, business and trade media.
He is the co-author of a leading public relations textbook – “Introduction to Strategic Public Relations – Communicating Effectively in a Socially Responsible World” from Sage Publishing. In its first year, (2018) the text was adopted by over 30 leading undergrad PR programs across the country. The second edition of the text, titled: “Introduction to Public Relations” was published in October 2020 by Sage Publishing. He also contributed as a co-author of a chapter on CSR in the book “Nation Branding and Public Diplomacy” (Peter Lang Publishing) published in 2017. He is active on Twitter at @gwprmasters and on Face Book and Linked-In under his name.