Message from the President

Message from the president

Dear Members and Friends of PRSA,

It’s all about Del Oro!

The awards.  This year we made lots of tweaks to the process. We got rid of those bulky old binders for our La Plata (campaign) and El Bronce (tactics) submissions, and instead, all of the entries were submitted and judged electronically. The Northern Iowa Chapter served as the judges for our La Plata and El Bronce entries. We are all anxiously awaiting the announcements regarding the winners.

Our individual award winners have already been announced, and they include some of San Antonio’s finest PR professionals and champions.  Felicidades to: 

• Barbara Cheaney, vice president of marketing and communications, Catholic Life Insurance - Tex Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award
• Robert (Bobby) Blount, Jr., MITRE Corporation; NISD Board member; president, Bexar County School Boards Coalition - Public Relations Champion
• Janet Holliday, president & CEO, The CE Group - Public Relations Professional of the Year
•  Felisha Bea Sanchez, director of marketing, Communities in Schools, San Antonio - Horizon Award
•  Louise Locker, founder of The Elf Louise Christmas Project, Community Service Award. 

Please join me in sending best wishes and congratulations to Barbara, Bobby, Janet, Felisha, and Louise on their Del Oro awards. 

The event. Our venue, the San Antonio Zoo, will be a lively and fun place for our annual celebration of the people, the campaigns, and the tactics that have made the past year such a good one.

The event kicks off with a reception at 5:30 with a cash bar in the carousel area. We have the carousel all to ourselves during the reception, and I know it will be a perfect place for photos with our PR colleagues and friends. I’m looking forward to my first carousel ride in a long time. A buffet dinner and our awards ceremony will follow in the Zoo’s “Beastro” (and the bar will move indoors to the Beastro too).  

If you haven’t been to the Zoo, you’re in for a treat. If you are a regular Zoo-goer, you’ll be able to experience our beautiful Zoo in a whole new way. 

What should I wear to Del Oro? If I said I haven’t thought about what I’m going to wear to our Del Oro awards night, I wouldn’t be telling the truth. I realize that because I’m really passionate about the topic of personal branding, I might be more interested in this topic than others are, but it WAS discussed by the Del Oro Committee. We’re going to send out a list of “Del Oro Event FAQs” in a week or so (that will answer questions like, “What should I wear?” and “How far do I have to walk?” and “Exactly what happens during the Del Oro night?”). In the meantime, the Committee decided that the “what to wear” question will be answered as follows: wear business or cocktail attire.

The Del Oro Committee.  What a great group! We get together to work on all things Del Oro every few weeks. It’s a dedicated, strategic, and smart group of people who have done so many good things in such a short time, carrying on all the good work that previous Del Oro committees started.  Thank you to the 2015 committee chairs Tracy Ross-Garcia, Suzanne Westrum, and Laura Hernandez Aplin for all they did in 2015; and to 2016 committee Monica Faulkenbery, APR, (chair), Fran Stephenson, APR, Debbie Rios-Vanskike, Laura Short, Bob Sheldon, APR, Fellow PRSA, Abbey Forney, Michelle Richard, and Tracy Ross-Garcia.  Our Del Oro committee is so dedicated that when there was a power outage in the midst of a meeting, they just kept on working by candlelight (see accompanying photo).

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays Del Oro committee members from the swift completion of their assignments. Pictured (L to R) are Bob Sheldon, Monica Faulkenbery, Abbey Forney, and Laura Short. 

Sponsorships

It’s the time of the year in which we talk a lot about sponsorships.  Sponsorships support PRSA and our scholarship endowment fund. We encourage you to invite your employer or your vendors to be a 2016 PRSA sponsor.  Sponsorship levels range from $3000 to $100.  We added the $100 “Friends” category to encourage smaller businesses to participate.  And I personally was especially happy about the new “Friends” category because it encourages small businesses like mine to participate in our sponsorship program.  Contact Krystal Jones, sponsorship chair, for more information and/or for sponsorship forms, at [email protected].

PR people

One of the reasons PRSA is valuable to us as individuals and to the profession is because of the people we meet and interact with on a regular basis.  So far this year, we have had 19 events (luncheons, mixer, board and committee meetings, study groups) with more than 420 individuals in attendance.  The people I meet at PRSA events inspire me, give me energy, and make me very grateful to be part of our group.  I’m taking the liberty of posting a picture in this newsletter with one of my newest PR friends, Sister Amanda Kern of the Daughters of Charity Services of San Antonio, at a recent PRSA luncheon.

Mark your calendars

• May 12 at 5:30: our Annual Del Oro Awards Event.  A cocktail hour and awards dinner will be held May 12 at San Antonio Zoo. Register here. We’re excited that this event will be held at the Zoo, which allows us to include some interesting opportunities into the program.  If you haven’t been on a carousel ride at the Zoo … well … you’ll be able to cross it off your bucket list on the night of Del Oro. 
• June 2 at 11:30: “Communications in the C-Suite” professional development lunch. Will be held at La Quinta Medical Center on Horizon Hill.  Watch your email for registration information.
• July:  PRSA Mixer.  Date, time, and location to be announced.

Finally ….

I welcome all of your ideas, opinions, and comments, so please contact me at [email protected] or 210-601-4572 to share your thoughts with me

All the best,
Gretchen Roufs, APR
PRSA San Antonio President