When Peter Magnani walked into the classroom, he had his PR chops down. He was well along into his career, but he wanted to kick it up a notch, enhance his stature in the
profession and maybe learn some new skills in an increasingly competitive environment.
That's just what the San Francisco Academy delivered.
"It gives you a chance to step away from the day-to-day job demands, which tend to get pretty tactical, and to stretch your strategic muscles, to think more broadly about the
profession and the function," says Magnani, senior VP/corporate communications at Bank of America in San Francisco and president of the local PRSA chapter.
A year-long series of seminars touching on a wide range of PR subjects, the San Francisco Academy has been slowly building steam as a respected vehicle for career advancement
at the highest levels of PR. How high? Well, the price tag provides a clue: $13,500 per student, though a fair portion of the cost is typically picked up by the participant's
employer.
Founded in 1990, the Academy is the brainchild of a group of leading communications execs who started the academy after going on a retreat in northern California's wine country
to discuss ways to help groom the next generation of top PR executives. The group included representatives from some of the country's biggest brands, including Chevron, Levi
Strauss, Bank of America and Transamerica, just to name a few.
The result of their efforts is a year-long program in which approximately 25 students hear visiting lecturers discuss a wide range of PR-related topics in a series of monthly
seminars. The list of subjects may sound a bit PR 101-ish: internal communications, crisis management, branding and so on. But don't be fooled; the classes are in fact held at the
highest levels.
"When I went through the program I was principally engaged in media relations," said Cary Walker. He took part in the academy in the mid-1990s while still a mid-level PR
professional. Now he is senior VP-corporate public relations at City National Bank in Los Angeles.
"As a result of that program I became better acquainted with financial communications, with executive communications," he said. "The academy really helped me to stitch together
all those things to understand their relationship and the combined strategic impact they could make on an organization."
For others, the lessons the Academy had to offer were all about the money. Magnini, for instance, says the experience helped him to better understand both the nature of
corporate finance, and how PR could justify its place on the balance sheet.
"For a lot of reasons, day-to-day public relations work does not include a lot of measurements. We talk about the impact on the bottom line, but day in and day out there are
other job demands that are always present," he said. "But when it comes time to talk about yourself as a candidate, you want to be able to put down some measurements, and Academy
training helped me to do that."
Specifically, Magnini likes be able to draw a line between the work he's accomplished and its impact on the bottom line. "That means understanding how the company defines
success and how it measures financial success, then trying to create a case that makes that connection," he says.
Having financial skill has helped Magnini to advance in his career but also to stay afloat in what for senior PR executives can be choppy waters. "I couldn't even begin to tell
you how many waves of change I have survived at Bank of America," he said. "Every time something came up and my job was on the line, I was able to put something together that
convinced the powers that be that I was contributing something of value."
A More Sophisticated Take On PR
Of course, the San Francisco Academy is not the only professional-development program in town. Many of the larger PR firms offer coursework to enhance practitioners' abilities.
The Arthur Page Society hosts a high-level executive forum each year, while the PRSA offers a bevy of one- and two-day professional development seminars. The acamedy is different,
though, according to its administrator Frank Kalupa, because the knowledge accumulated during the year provides a much more sophisticated view of the profession.
"There is a difference between being good at what you do and being good at managing what you do," Kalupa says. In the case of Academy participants, "they are all really good
already. They know how to write press releases, but we want to help them think about the broader corporate perspective."
Lately, the Academy has been raising the bar on exploring fiscal aspects of corporate life, combined with the finer points of managing PR.
To that end, recent seminars have included talks by Michael Josephson from the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles. Kalupa said the "whole issue of ethics and behavior
has been drawing attention in all of society, with all of the corporations having their problems."
At the same time, the Academy's curriculum has been weighted toward investor relations. Beyond teaching corporate communications from a more granular perspective people who
have attended say the Academy helps to fill a gap within the profession as a whole. By gathering top executives and setting a year-long academic agenda, the Academy is helping
everyone to move forward, said Keith Sheldon, a principal at Aztec Communication in Las Vegas and professional in resident at California State University at Chico.
"If you can't define what you do, if there are 500 definitions of public relations, it is hard to say what your function is," he says. "What we do is hard to measure, and so we
lack credibility as a profession. So, having something like the San Francisco Academy goes a long way toward establishing the fact that we are a credible profession with credible
standards."
Contacts: Frank Kalupa, 512.415.7328, [email protected]; Peter Magnani, 415.953.2418, [email protected]; Keith Sheldon, 530.898.5568, [email protected];
Cary Walker, 213.833.4715, [email protected]
Altering Your [PR] Perspective
Having gone through the San Francisco Academy professional development program, Peter Magnani has developed a simple formula for career success in PR: Figure out what the
company is trying to accomplish, especially in terms of financial performance, says Magnani, a senior VP at Bank of America. Then find a way to demonstrate that your performance
in PR has contributed directly to that bottom line.
But how to show it? The easiest way, says Magnani, is to the follow the money and learn your place in the chain. "Learn to read a balance sheet. Seriously. You can find a lot
of PR people in corporate America who cannot read a balance sheet," he says. To demonstrate one's worth to the company, "it all starts with financial literacy."
Higher Degree
The San Francisco Academy offers a series of year-long executive seminars throughout the country. Funding comes from several sources:
- Tuition of $13,500 per student, typically subsidized by the student's employer
- Corporate sponsorship. Wells Fargo, Dayton Hudson, Nortel Networks, AT&T, Bechtel Group and many others have contributed
- Seminar chairs, who may underwrite speaker fees or pay for related extracurricular events
- The Academy also draws academic expertise through a partnership with the Berkeley Center for Executive Development at the University of California Haas School of Business