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By Pharoh Martin | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES
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Gwen McKinney of McKinney & Associates
is celebrating her 20th year of business ownership.
Photo Courtesy of NNPA. |
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WASHINGTON (NNPA) - It was
1990. Two journalists had just started Washington, D.C.'s
first Black women-owned public relations agency in a church
basement. Gwen McKinney and her boutique public relations
firm, which she started with her then-business partner Leila
McDowell, had one distinct purpose - to advance social justice
and civil rights causes and issues that they cared about.
It's public relations with a conscience, as she likes to describe
it.
Beyond their initial one client, which they
attained despite having very little pubic relations experience,
the upstarts were building a company with essentially nothing
except sweat, tears and very long nights. Twenty years later,
McKinney recalls her journey to success.
"At that point, all we had was sweat equity,
which is not something invested with big bucks because, after
all, we were in a basement," McKinney said. "It
was the belief that we could do this, a commitment to do it
and had the skills to pull it off. And not caring, in some
ways, if you had a salary or not because sometimes that's
what you have to do. Being an entrepreneur means to take risks
and that's what we did."
Today, McKinney & Associates, which started
as McKinney & McDonnell, is a leading niche public relation
firm that is no longer housed in a basement of a church. They
moved up - literally. The company now rests comfortably on
the 9th floor of a downtown building, high above Washington's
renowned K Street, home to a majority country's powerful political
lobby firms. It has grown from a two woman operation into
very respected agency with a staff of a dozen and an impressive
client roster that spans the girth of national advocacy groups.
Integrity is central to McKinney work. She
does not represent individuals, corporations or organizations
whose views or positions she does not agree with, which means
possibly millions of dollars in potential business turned
down by the former Black newspaper reporter.
"There have been some foreign governments
who wanted me to represent them. I passed," McKinney
said. "There have been times when people have approached
me with domestic contracts and I passed. I have to be true
to what I say I am. Just from a business standpoint, if you
start going back on that than you lose your value to be who
you say you are."
The firm is not a hired gun, she insists.
"When we say the purity of truth, let's
be real, it's as you define it but there is a purity to it
if you believe in it then you can speak to it," McKinney
said. "And that's the way I feel about the clients I
represent. Everything is wrapped in contradictions, obviously.
The contradictions certainly shouldn't get in the way of what's
important. When you're representing an organization or individual,
there are always going to be flaws frailties based off of
the human realities. But the ultimate test is do you believe
that this is correct, just and deserves to be lifted up and
have a voice?"
McKinney's public relations career started
when she was tapped to be press secretary for Washington Congresswoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was, at the time, an accomplished
law professor running for election for her first term in congress
in 1990.
The Philadelphia native retained her first
official client after Norton said she needed somebody to do
the advertising buys for her general election campaign.
"That provided another opportunity for
me to transition to use my skills in understanding the press
and the media and then to position myself as an advocate,
a representative and a voice for a client," McKinney
said.
The result that followed was a growing stream
of customers that came from referrals of people from inside
the Holmes campaign.
Also, the contacts she made freelancing and
doing social justice work in South Africa as the congresswoman's
press secretary opened a lot of doors for the enterprising
publicist.
The firm's first big break came when McKinney
was able to ink the NAACP Legal Defense Fund as a client.
The Legal Defense Fund, founded by Thurgood
Marshall in 1940, was once considered the legal arm of the
civil rights movement. In 1992, when McKinney acquired them
as a client, they were even more formidable than they are
today. When McKinney & Associates became the Legal Defense
Fund's "agency of record" the start up firm became
cemented as a legitimate firm in the eyes of the media, the
civil rights, political and non-profit communities.
The Legal Defense Fund was a continuous retainer
client from 1992-2007. During that time, McKinney's client
list accumulated into a who's who of the advocacy community
including other power non-governmental organizations like
the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights, the United States Commission on Civil Rights,
the Metropolitan Washington Council/AFL-CIO, the TransAfrica
Forum and the Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington.
McKinney and her longtime business partner
Leila McDowell, who as the firm's co-founder served as its
vice president for 10 years, parted ways in 2000.
"She got to the point where she wanted
to do something else - and that's fine. Running a business
is not easy," said McKinney, adding that McDowell had
given it the “good college try” and had contributed
a lot where she brought in some major clients and was a key
figure in some of their major successes.
As the two parted as friends, McKinney &
McDowell transitioned into McKinney & Associates and the
president ran the company on her own. Currently, McDowell
works at the NAACP as the organization’s vice president
of communications.
Prior to starting the firm, both McKinney and
McDowell got their professional starts as journalists who
have with social justice backgrounds. McDowell was a radio
personality and broadcast journalist who worked at various
non-profit agencies and McKinney, who also did social justice
work with numerous advocacy groups, worked as a reporter for
the Black press. Their unique backgrounds translated perfectly
into what they gearing up to do and was a big reason why they
were able to be successful.
McKinney started out in the late 1970s as a
reporter for her hometown Black newspaper, the Philadelphia
Tribune, after obtaining degrees at West Chester University
and Temple University Graduate School. She wanted to not just
report but, rather, she wanted to be an advocacy journalist.
"That type of journalism spoke to me -
not only because it required … writing, it required
caring," she said.
The Tribune wanted to expand its metropolitan
edition and so it assigned McKinney to be a bureau chief of
a one-man editorial outpost in the town of Chester, which
about 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia. The Delaware County
suburb, which she described as "the pits of everything",
had a population of 50,000 that was 80 percent Black but was,
according to one published account, one of the most depressing
cities in America at the time.
"I didn't realize how important that assignment
was," she said.
McKinney was breaking stories important to
that area before her mainstream counterpart at the Philadelphia
Inquirer, in which they tried to poach her for a better paid
position on their staff but she declined, citing her commitment
to the Black press.
"It was there that I understood that the Black press
had not only an unique role but an important one of helping
to tell the story of people who may not have a voice,"
McKinney said.
After McKinney left the Tribune in 1981 she
continued to write for the Black press. She was syndicated
columnist for several Black weekly newspapers and she wrote
for Black mainstay magazines like Essence and Black Enterprise.
McKinney fell into her love of the Black press
after reading a quote by John Russwurm, co-founder of the
nation's first black newspaper the Freedom's Journal,, who
said, "We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have
others spoken for us."
She recalls, "I was like, ‘I agree
with that … And then because of the stories, the issues
and the struggles that people were waging, both large and
small, like an elderly woman who's electric gets cut off in
the dead of winter and telling her story and bigger ones like
the social injustice and political struggles, were relevant."
After moving to Washington in 1982 McKinney
held a job as a communication's director for advocate organization
that focused on student empowerment. She was writing newsletters
and such and while that job was interesting it didn't click
with her. She was still involved with a professional group
made up of people of color in the media, which she helped
found.
That provided a bridge between advocacy journalism
and advocacy public relations because the group would do community
forums and also in the mid-80s she got very involved with
the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
The agency's focuses today are criminal justice
advocacy, particularly issues surrounding the death penalty
and race, as well as civil rights and environmental issues
but they want to start zeroing in on health and health equality
issues and labor rights.
But for McKinney, it's just another day at
the job that she is still as passionate about as she was 20
years ago when she had one client and an office underneath
a church.
"When people say ‘I love my job’ that sounds
trite...but I will say this, there is not another job that
I could love as much."
Pharoh Martin is an NNPA national correspondent.
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