Roger Friedensen, APR

Job Title and Function: I’m a partner and co-founder of Forge Communications, a research and communication strategy firm with offices in Raleigh and Charlotte. Launched in 2009, we’re a small boutique firm comprised of senior-level consultants, so my work is actually doing the work – which I love. We all have held leadership positions in our past lives at agencies, non-profit associations, health systems and corporations, but this time around we wanted to spend our days helping clients solve real problems and produce measurable value rather than building a big firm again and having to “feed the overhead beast.” Been there, done that. 🙂

Most Rewarding thing about working in PR today: For me, it’s what it’s always been: the challenge that comes from helping create order out of chaos and solve complex problems; the opportunity to collaborate with smart, creative, accomplished individuals from whom I can learn; and the chance to do meaningful work that helps our clients — and, in turn, their employees, customers, communities and sectors — accomplish what they want and need to do better and improve lives. It’s also really cool to be working in the middle of one of [if not the most] transformative times in the industry’s history. As a geek and wanna-be futurist, I love the intersection of communications and technology!

Craziest/most challenging thing you’ve done in PR: After 32 years in this business, that could be a reaaaaaaally long list. A couple of items do stand out, though. First, I took a former U.S. Surgeon General, the past president of the American Medical Association, the president and CEO of the second-largest pharmaceutical company on the face of the planet, and about two dozen senior pharma executives to what turned out to be an overly trendy, Yuppie-filled restaurant/hip-hop dance bar in San Francisco’s financial district.

Second, I was once threatened by a county commissioner while on a client’s advance team informing him and his fellow commissioners that their county and three others in North Carolina were on the short list for a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. “Son, if I were you, I’d get out of this county by high noon. It’s time for us to marshal the troops.” We hit I-40 out of the county right after the meeting.

And finally, I helped one of my colleagues, the great Mike Herman, APR, Fellow PRSA of blessed memory, manage a “unique” crisis situation for one of our clients, Austin Nichols. I’ll let the Wikipedia entry speak for itself: “On May 9, 2000, a fire destroyed a seven-story aging warehouse at the company in Anderson County, Kentucky. It contained more than 17,000 wooden barrels of whiskey. Burning whiskey flowed from the warehouse, setting the woods on fire, causing limestone deposits to explode. Firefighters saved Lawrenceburg’s water treatment plant from destruction. However, an estimated 20% of the whiskey flowed into the Kentucky River. The river contamination required the temporary shutdown of the water treatment plant. Officials ordered water usage restrictions. Businesses and schools were closed because of the water shortage. The alcohol spill also depleted the oxygen in the river, killing an estimated 228,000 fish along a 66-mile stretch. The EPA and the Coast Guard’s Gulf Strike Team aerated the river using equipment mounted on barges. The company paid $256,000 to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife in an effort to restore the fish population in the river.”