Killeen: This mover will shake up PRSA

By Alvin M. Hattal

(Published in PR Week)

When she was 10 years old, Joann Killeen chased after three older boys who had kicked over her sandcastles and beat them up. She's still doing it, so to speak, but now it’s men she’s been taking on, and she's starting the fights.

She did it last year when she successfully challenged PRSA's nominee for the post of treasurer of the national organization. She did it again last month to become chair-elect. Nothing against men; she's happily married to a business executive. They just got in her way. She has, in fact, long had the backing of many PR professionals of all sexes nationwide, not only for her style but also for her solid credentials and instinct for leadership, recognized by PRSA with its President's Leadership Award in 1993 and 1994.

More than 40 PRSA Assembly delegates, including five district chairs and nine members of the Society’s national board—which is supposed to remain nonpartisan--supported her.

But the fiery election revealed strong opposition to her from many prominent--and influential--practitioners, including her own mentor. Pat Jackson, one of the infamous "Gang of 4" who bucked the PRSA establishment 20 years ago to become its president, fought her successful effort to win the post of treasurer last year (although he now acknowledges that "she did a helluva job and cleaned up the mess") and was a member of the Nominating Committee that backed her opponent.

"I've always like Joann because she's no-nonsense tough in a tactful way," Jackson says, "but I didn't think Joann [as secretary in 1999] had stood up to the staff in the foolish cliquishnessness that was going on.

"PRSA over the past six or seven years has been dumbed down to deal with the more-junior-level practitioners. Going for the numbers has changed it to a trade association instead of a professional society.”

In any case, Jackson adds, “Joann has learned a lot this year about the financial aspects and has now stood up to the staff. She’s great at the grass roots and the members will feel they have a voice in her in such problems as the computer foul-up.”

20 years later

So here she is, some 20 years after Jackson’s rebellion, doing the same thing. Not only, she says, was she “convinced I was the best candidate for the job” both times. She also believes PRSA “needs to move toward a businesslike model instead of a nonprofit—a profit-and-loss point of view--rather than spread ourselves so thin that we don’t succeed in any of our programs or initiatives while our members continue to remain unhappy.”

Killeen has talked with more than a dozen PRSA chapters that, she says, agree and “want help with the business side of their operations.”

Her knowledge of PR is rooted, she says, in the extensive body of knowledge she acquired preparing for accreditation, when she “found and read every book on the list,” becoming “really comfortable about knowing why we do what we do. It’s not just something intuitive; there’s really a science to what we do.”

Another former PRSA president, Joe Epley, under whom Killeen served as chair of the Accreditation Committee, also opposed her challenge but praises her undisputed dedication to the Society and her new, hard-won position.

On the other hand, Mitchell Kozikowski, a veteran agency executive and head of the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Affairs, thinks “it was unprofessional” of Killeen to flout PRSA’s established election process. He also disagrees with her contention, he said, that, “everything is bad about the Society, it’s somebody else’s fault, and she’s the savior.”

The march to the top

But that’s pretty much how Killeen began her march last year to the top, especially “by standing up for women, but not in a strident way,” says Richard Terrell. Terrell, managing associate of Casey & Sayre, Santa Monica, CA, says her opponent then for the position of treasurer “tried to make it sound as though a woman couldn’t make the hard financial decisions.” Talk about a red flag—to an Irishwoman! “Joann,” he added, “didn’t take office till [PRSA’s well-known financial] damage was done.”

Even Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is outspokenly proud, inviting her to make a presentation before the City Council. After all, she is a native Angelina and got her undergraduate degree at the California State University at Northridge, before moving to Boston, where she had her own PR firm for seven years.

In Boston she was The Weber Group’s director of investor relations, after which she joined Waggener Edstrom, where she managed the $1.8-million public relations account for Microsoft Windows NT and Security.

Partly because her strength--her passion--in high tech, she was recruited in 1997 to Portland, OR-based Infinite Pictures Inc. That was the year she also developed daylong PR strategic planning workshops for smaller PRSA chapters’ professional development. She took that show on the road to several chapters around the country, where she has also been in demand as a speaker. In 1994, after a 26year career in the profession that ranged from nonprofit to corporate and investor relations, higher education, agency and solo counseling, she became the youngest PRSA Fellow.

She and her husband returned last year to L.A., where she now has a small practice now includes two start-ups in the Los Angeles area that she declines to name and a high tech software company NAME? in Orange County. She also regularly consults on strategy with a financial services PR firm in Boston, where she earned her master's degree at Simmons College.

There’s more, much more than room permits here. But it’s clear that she has immersed herself in a lifelong love affair with her work, and friends have likened her to the Energizer bunny.

On weekends, if she’s not on a plane, she dons her roller blade outfit, complete with helmet and elbow shields, and heads for the beach or some flea market with Parker, her seven-month-old airedale. “I look like one of those kids,” she says. She loves to draw and working with fabrics—a fiber artist, making quilts, among other things, and, when not snorkeling at Grand Cayman, has taken a number of courses at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts.

And since she flies a lot, she reads voraciously, almost as fast she talks, which she does eloquently both one-on-one and before large groups, such as the 175 who came to hear her speak on technology at the Orange County Software Council meeting last year.

“It was reassuring,” she says, “to understand that technology companies are now acknowledging that they need both venture capital and public relations.”

Up in the air, under water, on wheels—wherever--this self-styled “tech diva” is a dynamo who’s always “on.” What makes Killeen unique is her infectious passion for her work, a perky wit and an elegant yet unbridled enthusiasm.

Just stay away from her sandcastles.

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