D.C. PR Mogul Recalls Rise to Success

1. From Black Press to PR With a Conscience - D.C. PR Mogul Recalls Rise to Success
by Pharoh Martin
NNPA National Correspondent
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 public 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 & McDowell Associates, 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 of country's powerful
political lobby firms. It has grown from a two woman operation into a 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've passed. I have to be true to what I say I am.
Just from a business standpoint, if you start going back on that then 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 and 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.

2. 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 Associates 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.

3. 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.''