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David Drobis

Alumni & Friends >> David Drobis

David Drobis MA '65, Journalism & PR Chairman Emeritus, Ketchum

David Drobis, named one of the top ten most influential people in public relations in the 20th century by PR Week, is proud of what he's given the industry. The chairman of Ketchum, one of the top ten public relation firms in the country, he lists a long line of positions he's held in professional organizations: president of the Arthur W. Page Society; founding chairman of the Council of Public Relations Firms; president of the ICCO international trade association; and active member of the Public Relations Society of America, to name a few. His sense of service to the profession, he says, comes from his education, including the years he spent at the American University School of Communication, then a department in the College of Arts & Sciences, earning a master's degree in journalism and public relations.

His active professional life, spanning a period when public relations, grew from a relatively limited profession in the U.S. to "an important business tool" throughout the world, has been broadly varied. He has worked with a spectrum of clients, contributing to campaigns as disparate as that of the California Raisins (those dancing cartoon characters from sunny California), Florida orange juice (back in the days when O.J. Simpson promoted it), and Wendy's restaurants, with CEO Dave Thomas ("Our job has always been to humanize David and make him believable in the commercials"). Ketchum continues to serve such clients as Cingular Wireless, IBM, Pfizer, FedEx, Frito-Lay, Kodak, Home Depot and others.

As interesting as this work may be, after 35 years at Ketchum, one might wonder whether there is anything new to capture Drobis's enthusiasm. He quickly points out that his work continues to offer constant variety, in the many different companies and people with whom he relates. "I've always had different challenges," he says. He has worked in three different Ketchum offices - in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and New York - at one point establishing a brand new base of operations and, at another, shifting headquarters to New York. He was CEO of Ketchum from 1994 until 2001 and was responsible for opening Ketchum's offices beyond the U.S. in Europe, Asia and Latin America. He's dealt with countless multinational clients, new product introductions and inventions, and all the issues that affect products and corporations - environmental, human resources, and social. "It's never boring," he says.

Drobis remembers his years in Washington fondly. "It's a great place to study and work," he remembers. At AU's SOC, he learned what he calls "the discipline in journalistic writing," something that helped him particularly in the first years of his career, when he wrote every day. Professors who had experience in the working world influenced him heavily, as well. "That's one of the AU's great strengths," he says, "being in the Washington area, you have access to really interesting professors."

That real-world experience continued when Drobis took a job with AU's University Relations office, writing press releases. He was the press agent when President John F. Kennedy delivered one of his most famous speeches, right on campus - "for American, for the world, and for me," he says. When he left AU, Drobis became an assistant director of press relations for Montgomery County at a time when the area was booming, and zoning and transportation issues crowded the headlines. The Washington media covered the county heavily, he recalls, and he wound up working with people like Carl Bernstein, who was on the Montgomery County beat for The Washington Post. "It was those kinds of people I had exposure to. That was among the reasons I loved being in Washington."

Now a resident of New York, Drobis travels frequently for a business that has become global. "I go to China and India and all over Europe, and I have for the last 15 years," he says, savoring what he considers his good fortune. "How can that not be fun?"