Meet Emilia Gledhill

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emilia Gledhill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Emilia, so happy to have you on the platform with us today and excited to chat about your lessons and insights. Our ability to make good decisions can massively impact our lives, careers and relationships and so it would be very helpful to hear about how you built your decision-making skills.
In our industry, information comes at us at such high speed and volume, it’s like drinking from a fire hose all day every day, between the rapidly changing news cycle and our clients’ ever-evolving opinions on the latest developments, it’s critical to be able to quickly prioritize what needs our top attention at any point. We also have to maintain the flexibility to pivot when (undoubtedly) another bigger fire pops up. Learning to manage all that information is the hardest part of being a publicist, but it’s also the most fun because no two days (or even two hours) are ever the same. We are constantly learning and adjusting to the nuances of each storyline and how to fit our clients’ expertise into the coverage. It takes practice but I learned that I actually work really well under pressure and in chaotic situations. I am good at identifying which task to focus on at a given moment. This skill may have come from my experience as an elite volleyball player, in anticipating my opponents’ next move, I was always ready for the next spike or setup. I think my naturally competitive nature also helps me be committed to finding the best way to get my clients booked before producers turn to other experts.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of being a publicist… Actually, that’s not at all how this happened! In fact, I grew up watching my mom build her PR firm from scratch, and like every rebellious child, I was determined that was the last thing I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to use my creativity to become a fashion stylist so I earned a degree in apparel and textiles technology and set out to take the fashion world by storm. Along the way, I worked in scripted and reality TV production, learned from the wardrobe teams, and finally landed a job as a stylist. The more I saw the business world, the more I admired my mom for going out on her own and finding her way to build a successful business in a very competitive field. Then in late 2021, a bizarre set of circumstances occurred that threw me into the world of PR. My mom’s longtime managing director abruptly quit, and since I absolutely hated my styling job, I offered to come “help” until we both figured out our next move. Turns out that growing up, I had picked up on a lot more of what my mom was doing than either of us realized. I quickly progressed from assistant to account executive, and by the end of the year, we both realized this was what I was meant to do – I loved it and I was good at it! By the end of the second year, I was a 50/50 partner in the firm with my mom. I was managing a staff of 5, booking top-tier interviews for our clients, and leading our media training sessions. Now three years later we have a plan for my mom to retire and for me to take over completely. Sometimes the universe has a plan that’s way better than the plan we might have for ourselves!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Relationship-building is the most important skill for this work. Our clients and our media contacts have to be able to trust us. Clients need to know we want their success as much as they do, and producers/reporters need to know we’ll only bring them guests who are relevant, who are prepared, and who will add value to their coverage.

Flexibility is key because each day is different and you have to be able to adjust to each new development in the news cycle.

And creativity is essential because sometimes there just isn’t an obvious way to work your client into the news cycle. You need to be able to dig deep into their background and find a way to connect the dots – sometimes in a way that even they hadn’t thought of!

We always tell our clients to be voracious consumers of the media they want to be interviewed by, and the same is true for aspiring publicists. If you want to work in entertainment PR, steep yourself in Entertainment Tonight, E! News, Variety, and People Magazine. Know the kinds of people they interview and the types of storylines they like best. If you’re interviewing with a PR firm, stalk their clients so you know the big “gets” the firm has gotten for them and you can reference those. A huge part of this job is match-making clients and their media dream dates so it’s vital to understand what makes each attractive to the other.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
Our ideal client is someone whose expertise we can work into the daily news cycle. This could be a political strategist from either the right or left (strong opinions are key); a military expert to discuss the wars in Israel, Ukraine, and other parts of the world; or a lawyer to analyze high-profile trials or legal issues in the news. It could even be a pop culture expert to talk about why we care about Taylor Swift’s every move or a medical expert to talk about the latest breakthroughs in healthcare. If the person’s expertise fits the headlines of the day, they also have to be “media friendly,” which means they have to add value to the coverage and be entertaining to watch, listen to, or read. And if they’re not quite there yet, we can help them develop and polish their on-camera skills with personalized media training, virtually or in-studio.

Contact Info:

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