Leadership Changes at PCI as Richard A. Barry Announces Retirement After 36 Years at Helm

CHICAGO (February 27, 2006) - Public Communications Inc. (PCI) www.pcipr.com announced today that Richard A. Barry will step down as president of the 43-year-old public relations firm March 1 and retire from the company this September. Dorothy Oliver Pirovano, APR, a senior owner and 25-year veteran of the firm, will succeed Barry as president and chief executive officer.

Barry, 71, joined PCI in 1970 as executive vice president and two years later was named president and creative director. As chief executive officer of the firm, he has helped lead it to its present position, ranked 42nd among the largest independent public relations firms in the United States according to O’Dwyer’s Report. The national communications industry publication also cites PCI as the second largest independently owned public relations firm in the Chicago market.

Pirovano, 60, will be joined by two other PCI principals, Ruth Mugalian, 54, and Jill Allread, APR, 46, to form the new ownership team, placing PCI among the largest woman-owned public relations firms in the Midwest. All three are former print journalists. Mugalian, who joined PCI in 1984 following a career as a Daily Herald news and feature writer, will assume Pirovano’s post as corporate secretary; and Allread, formerly metropolitan editor of The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette who is in her 13th year with the firm, will succeed Barry as treasurer.

While Barry, who has taken a lead role in many of PCI’s health care, corporate and issues management clients, will retire officially from PCI Sept. 1, he will continue as a senior consultant on special client projects and will serve as a pro bono communications consultant for Holy Family parish as Chicago’s second oldest church celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2007.

“For nearly four decades, I’ve been privileged to help scores of PCI’s corporate and non-profit clients tell their stories with accuracy and clarity. I’ve now elected to trigger the firm’s long-standing succession plan to place PCI’s management in the very capable hands of three experienced principals. I look forward to an active retirement that will include continued service as communications counsel for many of our firm’s very same clients,” said Barry.

“It’s a credit to Dick and the founders of this firm that after 43-years in business, there can be a seamless management transition” said Pirovano. “Our clients can expect the same high standards, the same hands-on approach from owners and the same jump-through-hoops service that have been hallmarks of PCI.”

Pirovano said the firm is seeking certification as a woman-owned business enterprise (WBE) and expects the designation to help PCI expand its business in many quarters. PCI is known for its work in Chicago and nationally in health care and medicine, conservation, culture and entertainment, education and with not-for-profits, particularly professional associations. It has a significant practice working in issues management, crisis communications, branding and image.

Barry, along with James B. Strenski, the firm’s first chairman, was a founding member of the Worldcom Public Relations Group, www.worldcomgroup.com, now the world’s largest network of independently owned public relations counseling firms with more than 100 offices in 133 markets on six continents.

Richard A. Barry
Dick has more than 40 years of diversified public relations management, counseling, editorial and graphics experience. He has led numerous strategic communications campaigns and programs for corporate, financial, marketing and crisis situation clients. He takes a strong role in many of PCI’s health care, corporate and financial and issues management/crisis communications client engagements.

Dick began his communications career working nights and weekends as a full-time member of the famed NBC Guide staff in the Merchandise Mart studios while earning a bachelor of science degree in political science at Loyola University Chicago in 1956. Later, he was editor of The Loyola News, the university’s campus weekly newspaper. Dick holds a certificate from the University of Chicago program in publishing and graphic arts. Early in his career he was an advertising copywriter at Montgomery Ward and Company and then associate editor of the Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s magazine.

Dick spent eight years as director of public relations of Loyola University Chicago where he managed media relations, publication and advertising programs. Subsequently, he served in a similar capacity at Saint Xavier (University) College Chicago for two years. Prior to joining PCI in 1970, he spent two years as a senior vice president of Daniel J. Edelman, Inc., where he directed a group of corporate, financial and marketing accounts.

Early in his career, Dick served on the Chicago Police Department communications task force that created the memorable “we serve and protect” slogan that has been emulated by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. For the Archdiocese of Chicago school system, he created the “Choose Catholic Schools” campaign that was a forerunner of the National Catholic Education Association’s annual Catholic Schools Week.

More recently, Dick led PCI’s international, multi-year “NI, the educated choice for business” campaign for Invest in Northern Ireland. During his four-decade agency career, Dick managed numerous public relations programs for Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, International Harvester (Navistar), National Cattlemen’s Association, National Association of Realtors® and scores of national and local not-for-profit organizations.

Barry has a passion for historic and environmental preservation.

He earned national recognition for his management of PCI’s successful pro bono campaign to save from demolition by its owners Holy Family Church, the historic Victorian Gothic building designed in 1857 by the city’s first registered architect, John Van Osdel. The firm’s massive international media relations initiative to “say prayers and send money” helped raise more than $4.5 million to save and restore Holy Family.

For his contributions, Dick earned awards from the Association of Business Communicators, Publicity Club of Chicago, Archdiocese of Chicago, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The near West Side church, now virtually restored, serves a growing and diverse congregation drawn from the entire Chicago metropolitan area.

Dick and his wife, Mary Jo, led a successful campaign to reverse a Door County (Wis.) Board of Supervisors’ decision to downsize zoning that would have doubled the density of 25 residential land parcels located on a fragile Niagara limestone bluff escarpment in Liberty Grove township.

He is a past president of the 80,000 member Loyola University Alumni Association and is a member of the communications advisory boards of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Union League Club of Chicago. The Barrys reside in the Beverly-Morgan Park community in Chicago where they are active in the Beverly Area Planning Association and other community organizations.

Dorothy Oliver Pirovano
Dorothy Oliver Pirovano has extensive experience in communications and issues management having served both corporate and not-for-profit clients in her 25 years at PCI.

Dorothy moved into public relations from a career in journalism in 1981 and has been responsible for marketing, issues management, image, and public and professional education efforts on behalf of a diverse range of clients including GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 3M, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Baxter Healthcare Corporation and their divisions; the Radiological Society of North America; the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society; the American Headache Society; University of North Carolina Health Care and a number of hospitals, clinics and service providers to the health care industry. She also has led the firm’s sports marketing practice, serving the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Rush and programs sponsored by Major League Baseball.

Dorothy has earned on behalf of clients four Silver Anvil awards in marketing from the Public Relations Society of America; the Edwin J. Shaughnessy Quality of Life Award, Gold and Silver Trumpets and Merit awards from the Publicity Club of Chicago; and CIPRA awards from Inside PR magazine.

As a journalist, Dorothy served in a variety of reporting and editorial positions including city editor, features editor, columnist and editorial board member for Paddock Publications, which operates the Daily Herald newspapers, a chain of dailies in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. She is the recipient of numerous national and state reporting and editing awards including the Jacob Scher Award for investigative reporting, and the Charles Stewart Mott award for education reporting.

Dorothy and her husband, Larry, reside in the Lincoln Park community of Chicago.

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