Public Relations is a part of the business that earns trust before anyone is ready to buy, defends reputation when the stakes are high, and builds visibility that compounds over time. When it’s done well, it influences real decisions and outcomes, even when the impact shows up across multiple channels rather than in a single neat dashboard. 

For Women’s History Month, Firmani + Associates is spotlighting three leaders who helped shape the modern practice of PR and communications, making it more disciplined, more credible and more measurable. As a women-owned and operated agency, we see their influence in how we plan, how we execute and how we show value with clear frameworks and results-driven reporting. 

Betsy Plank and PRSSA: Standards, mentorship and professional development 

Betsy Plank was the first woman elected president of the Public Relations Society of America in 1973. She also played a key role in creating the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), PRSA’s student affiliate and a foundational pipeline for the next generation of communicators.   

Her deeper legacy is what she pushed our field toward: stronger professional expectations, leadership development and a model for doing the work with rigor. When PR is treated as a strategic discipline, measurement becomes clearer because goals are defined up front and outcomes align with business priorities. 

At Firmani + Associates, we’re proud proponents of PRSSA because it reflects what Plank believed in: preparation, mentorship and standards that strengthen the profession over time. 

Dee Dee Myers: Message discipline and credibility under pressure 

Dee Dee Myers made history as the first woman White House press secretary in 1993, a role that requires rapid synthesis, clear messaging, and consistency amid daily public scrutiny. 

Myers’ legacy connects directly to measurement. When you’re operating under pressure, outputs matter most when they connect to outcomes and add clarity around impact. Did they reduce confusion? Did they build trust? Did they change what stakeholders did next? 

We consistently build this muscle in our work by treating audience responses as real feedback and using that data to take intelligent risks and inform future decisions. 

Gini Dietrich and the PESO model: Integrated communications you can measure 

Gini Dietrich created the PESO Model, a framework that shows how integrated marketing and communications across Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media drives exponentially greater outcomes, creating a flywheel effect. 

This is a big deal for agencies like ours because it gives structure to how all the pieces connect, something PR struggled to explain, historically. PESO helps agencies like F+A connect our work to outcomes by measuring each channel and evaluating the full system as a whole. 

• Owned media becomes the source of truth and the home base for what you want audiences to understand 

• Earned media provides validation and third-party credibility 

• Shared media shows how ideas travel, where they resonate and where they are challenged 

• Paid media accelerates what is already working  

At Firmani + Associates, we also use the PESO model because it matches how today’s audiences behave. They encounter messaging across multiple channels, sometimes all within a few short minutes. They meet content in pieces across search, social, media coverage, newsletters, ads and communities. PESO lets us plan for that reality, then measure it. 

What these three women share and why it matters to us as a women-owned agency 

Plank, Myers and Dietrich shaped PR in three different arenas, but they share a theme. 

They made communications more accountable. 

• Plank helped define standards and leadership expectations for the profession   

• Myers demonstrated what disciplined messaging looks like under daily pressure and public evaluation   

• Dietrich created the practical framework and operating system for integrated planning and measurable results across channels   

Women have been doing our kind of disciplined, high-stakes, measurable communications work for a long time. This month is a good moment to highlight it and then keep doing it. 

As a women‑owned agency, Firmani + Associates honors Women’s History Month by recognizing the trailblazers who shaped modern PR.