PR NOTABLES OF AMERICAN

BARBARA C. HARRIS

1930–2020

Barbara Clementine Harris began her career at Joseph Baker’s public relations agency in Philadelphia. During her tenure there, Harris developed a Division of Women’s Information and edited a monthly publication for homemakers. She rose in rank at the firm, becoming its president in 1958. Harris was elected president of PRSA’s Philadelphia Chapter in 1973. Harris went to work for Sun Oil Company in 1968 where she held high-level public relations positions until 1977. She was among the few African American women to hold such senior public relations positions at the time. Harris also served as an American bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. She was the first woman consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion. (Courtesy of The Archives of the Episcopal Church)

Cathy Renna and Her Amazing Fight for LGBTQ Rights

1998

Some events shake the national conscience, serving as a fulcrum between life before and after. The fatal beating of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., in October 1998 was such a moment in the history of LGBTQ+ rights.

Cathy Renna, then national news media director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, arrived in Laramie when Shepard was still clinging to life in a hospital. Reporters were descending on the college town.

She worked to provide context to the hate crime so the stories would reflect the real-life experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.

“In 1998, this was the first time the news media was really paying attention to this issue in a way that was substantial,” Renna recalled in a 2014 TEDxClaremontColleges talk.

Renna describes the Shepard killing as a watershed moment. She has since been involved in many LGBTQ+ issues, including the fight for marriage equality and the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which had barred gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans from openly serving in the U.S. military.

In 2019, Renna worked with NYC Pride to help coordinate media coverage of World Pride/Stonewall 50, the 50th anniversary of the 1969 riots that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. The first annual Pride parade took place the next year in 1970.

Renna is communications director of the National LGBTQ Task Force and co-founder of the PR firm Target Cue. She often explains why it’s important to tell individual stories.“At the end of the day, my work is about visibility and lifting up stories of people who don’t have that visibility,” she says.