One of my greatest pleasures is to share the knowledge and experience I have gained from a lifetime in public relations with young people who have chosen this exciting business as their career.
The Internet has given me the opportunity to reach out to the far corners of the globe and since 1993 when I launched
www.askdd.com as an advisory service for PR people I have personally answered, free of charge, more than 3,000 questions from newcomers wanting advice on everything from finding work experience, and dealing with sexual harrassment to being successful at job interviews; more experienced practitioners have sought guidance on how to get their careers back on track after redundancy or who have been afraid of their careers were hitting a brick wall.
I have guided agency owners through the trauma of selling their businesses before retirement, advised agency managements on how to rekindle growth after a run of lost new business pitches
and helped companies reorganise their inhouse PR departments to provide a more effective service.
Along the way I have made many friends whom I have never met face to face. People like Andy from Cape Town whom I 'hand held' across the Internet through his first job interview with a PR agency and his career is starting to flourish. There was Pauline, an account executive with a New York agency, who was being sexually terrorised by a client who threatened to pull the account if she told her employers. She told me instead and the agency fired the client! She's now moved on and is doing well.
There are many more stories such as these. The highly personal ones remain confidential while the career and advice skills have been created into The Knowledge Bank on
www.askdd.com that is accessible without charge to everyone who visits the site. In response to frequent requests I have created a collection of training programmes that are also available at an artifically low price so that they are affordable by anyone, whatever their status or wherever they live.
