I was filled with excite­ment as I walked up to the Fleishman-Hillard offices in Atlanta, Geor­gia, a small stepping-stone from my home­town, New York City. As one of the top pub­lic rela­tions firms in the world, I knew that I absolutely could not miss out on an oppor­tu­nity like this and so I found myself fly­ing down south the night before the intern­ship. As I walked the two blocks from my hotel to the office cen­ter, I was shocked by the eighty-four weather-a tem­per­a­ture this New Yorker hadn’t expe­ri­enced since sum­mer! I entered the build­ing and was imme­di­ately redeemed with cold air-conditioning, “the mark of a true south­ern build­ing” I was told by fel­low intern Matthew Shack­elford ’15. Matthew and I met almost simul­ta­ne­ously at the front desk where we greeted by a friendly sec­re­tary and then our host, McCall Butler.

McCall But­ler ‘97, an alum of Prince­ton and later Dart­mouth, was the per­fect men­tor for us. She con­nected with Matthew on her con­nec­tion to Atlanta, where she was born and raised, and to me based on her expe­ri­ence work­ing in New York City. We spent just over an hour talk­ing with her about her back­ground and then her work with her main client AT&T. McCall had a very inter­est­ing his­tory, hav­ing started in gov­ern­ment con­sult­ing right of col­lege, and then work­ing at America’s Promise, a non-profit in DC, before going to busi­ness school. She then attended The Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth where she met her future pro­fes­sor, men­tor and employer Paul Argenti. Argenti, an expert in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has writ­ten many books about the field of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, most notably Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (fifth edi­tion, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2009) and Dig­i­tal Strate­gies for Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (McGraw-Hill, 2009). McCall had a chance to work with Argenti and Fleish­man Pres­i­dent and Senior Part­ner  Peter Ver­ren­gia dur­ing her time at Dart­mouth and then went on to work at Fleishman-Hillard. She has worked at Fleish­man for seven and a half years, work­ing for six years with AT&T. She cur­rently holds the posi­tion of Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner and works with her team on merg­ers, quar­terly earn­ings, the AT&T proxy state­ment, sup­port for the annual meet­ing and the annual report.

McCall then explained to us how we were going to struc­ture our day:

9–10:15 — Intro­du­tion with McCall
10:15–10:30 — Short cof­fee break
10:30–11:30 — Meet­ing with Michael Ares & Tammy Gon­za­lez
11:30–12 — Break and time to ask McCall more ques­tions
12–1:30 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team includ­ing Larry Solomon
1:30–2:30 — Lunch 2:30–3– Con­fer­ence Call with Larry Solomon
3–3:30 — Meet­ing with Chad Cor­ley
3:30–4 — Dis­cus­sion with Chad Cor­ley, Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom
4–5 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team

In our first meet­ing, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Michael Ares explained his work with a global man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany. He sum­ma­rized his role in say­ing that he essen­tially helps “pull in the resources to get what they need.” Given that I have inter­est in inter­na­tional pub­lic rela­tions, I found what he had to say about his clients’ global mar­kets in Brazil, North Amer­i­can and Europe very inter­est­ing. Tammy Gon­za­lez worked mainly with a man­u­fac­turer of indus­trial clean­ing prod­ucts and told us about how she was drawn into the field of Investor Rela­tions. She also gave us two arti­cles, one pub­lished in USA Today about a global phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany and another in the Wall Street Jour­nal about the  new energy efforts by a gov­ern­men­tal agency . She explained how PR com­pa­nies often pitch the essen­tial mes­sage of arti­cles to news­pa­pers in order to pro­mote their clients. Matthew and I were sur­prised to learn how many news­pa­pers get their sto­ries in this way and thus how much pub­lic rela­tions has an effect on world per­cep­tions and the mod­ern consumer.

The con­fer­ence call with the AT&T team was a very infor­ma­tive phone call and Matthew and I were even able to par­tic­i­pate in a very small way. Matthew and I were asked about what sorts of social media net­works we use includ­ing Pin­ter­est and Insta­gram and so we were able to see the impor­tance of knowl­edge of pop­u­lar cul­ture and social media in the PR world.

For lunch, McCall took us out to a Mex­i­can restau­rant where I was able to have my first south­ern sweet tea-delicious! We talked more about AT&T and its mes­sage and McCall’s expe­ri­ence at Prince­ton. We learned that she is a very active alum and will be cel­e­brat­ing her 15th reunion this year. She told us about her expe­ri­ence as an art his­tory major and also that she was pres­i­dent of her eat­ing club, Clois­ter, which I am also a mem­ber of. It was very excit­ing to get to make a con­nec­tion to McCall on a per­sonal level and I loved my quesadilla. 

McCall’s next phone call was short and dis­cussed much of what we had talked about before but in more detail. Next we met with Chad Cor­ley. Chad gave us more of a sense of what Fleishman-Hillard does since McCall works more with AT&T. Chad explained about Fleishman’s prac­tice groups and the details of his sec­tor: the con­sumer group. His group mainly works on how to encour­age con­sumers to use a cer­tain prod­uct whether via social media or other means. He talked about his work in business-to busi­ness PR ver­sus business-to-consumer PR as well. Then Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom entered the room and we dis­cussed their role in Dig­i­tal Media and more about how social media has affected PR. Besides get­ting to know McCall, this was prob­a­bly my favorite part of the day as it gave a really com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of PR and how it has changed global markets.

McCall’s last phone call included more work with AT&T and by that point, Matthew and I felt very involved in the process. After­wards we took some pic­tures at the office and wrapped up with McCall. It was all in all, a really award­ing expe­ri­ence and a fan­tas­tic trip. Matthew and I were really able to see how dif­fer­ent sec­tors of pub­lic rela­tions work and what tech­niques each group uses. We could not have asked for a bet­ter host in McCall and she gave me a deeper appre­ci­a­tion of what it means to be a tiger. Not only do I hope to be in this field one day, but I also aspire to be just as involved as a Prince­ton alum as she is.