RIGHT BEHIND HIM: Frank Ovaitt follows Jack Felton as head of the Institute for Public Relations.
tough act to follow
Success, simplified
When Jack Felton retired as president and CEO of the Institute for Public Relations in December, he left little doubt about how to measure success.
One of the highlights of his 10 years at the institute, which is based in the College, was helping to found the Commission for Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation in the 1990s.
The commission, which studies the effectiveness of public relations in its different fields, “strengthens our voice and adds to the credibility in the industry,” said former Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) President and CEO Del Galloway, PR 1981, MAMC 1983. “It put the institute in a leadership position.”
Felton is also proud of boosting the board from 12 members to 32 members at the 49-year-old institute, which is dedicated to exploring the “science beneath the art of public relations.”
Felton passed the baton to Frank Ovaitt, who served on the board for nearly a decade, including several years as co-chair.
“What’s intimidating is all this sense of what we could be,” Ovaitt said, noting that as a result of his 20-year friendship with Felton he “wants to make Jack very proud of everything we do.”
They met in New York at an AT&T program on international public relations. At the time, Felton served as vice president of corporate communication for the international spice company McCormick, and Ovaitt served as public relations vice president-international for AT&T.
GLOBAL GOAL: One of Frank Ovaitt's objectives is to expand the Institute of Public Relations international reach.
Ovaitt’s experience in the global arena helps him develop one of his first projects as the institute’s president and CEO: the new Commission on International Public Relations. He works with Assistant Prof. Juan-Carlos Molleda to blaze a trail in a largely unexplored territory.
“We want to go beyond anecdotal knowledge and ‘war stories’ as the primary way that people learn about international public relations,” Ovaitt said. “We want to look at a set of factors to create a predictive model. We want to see what works, country by country.”
Ovaitt started another global project for the institute as a board member in 2003, working with academics to put together the International Index of Bribery for News Coverage.
“We looked at factors for where this practice [bribery] is likely to occur around the world,” he said. “Our intent was to put a spotlight on the practice and to help stamp it out in all forms.”
As much as Ovaitt works to branch out, he also continues to focus the institute on a particular element of its core mission: bridging the gap between academia and the profession.
“We’ve long been the only independent [public relations] foundation that brings education and practice together,” he said. “We do that by building and documenting research-based knowledge in the field, and then mainstreaming that into the profession.”
Ovaitt brings a different flavor to the job than Felton, said Michelle Hinson, the institute’s director of development.
“Jack is cabs and caviar,” she said, “Frank is take the subway and eat there too.”
Kathleen Kelly, chair of the Department of Public Relations and a member of the institute’s board of trustees, believes their differences are only on the surface.
“When you get to know them better,” she said, “Frank is just as debonair and exuberant as Jack, and Jack is just as introspective and vision-driven as Frank.”
Ovaitt knows he needs to extend the institute’s reach. Its strategic plan, updated soon after he filled the position, states that every serious public relations professional and professor should know what the institute is, what it does and why it’s important.
This gives Ovaitt a way to measure his success.
“I’ll say the institute is very successful,” he said, “if that is a true statement at the time I leave this job.”
–Katie Evans
