Cover Story
Creative relations
How Nancy Ruscheinski drives innovation at Edelman by finding unique ways to keep employees focused
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | January 2009
Page 1 of 3
Nancy Ruscheinski president and COO, Edelman U.S.; chairman, Edelman Digital
Nancy Ruscheinski has done all she can
to drive growth at Edelman.
She’s helped make the nation’s largest
public relations firm tops in Chicago, she’s
responsible for carving out a niche for the
company by founding its interactive and
creative services groups, and, of course,
she took more than a monthlong sabbatical
not too long ago.
That’s right, she took a nice, long sabbatical to clear her mind and do some traveling with her family. Look, Edelman is not
Ebenezer Scrooge’s PR company. With the
competition constantly vying for
Edelman’s top clients like Burger King and
Wrigley, Ruscheinski and the leadership
team are forever pushing new angles on
how to spark growth through creativity.
“The industry that we’re in, creativity is
table stakes,” She says. “It’s not a luxury;
it’s a necessity for us, so there’s real self-interest in creating an environment that
spurs creative thinking.”
Creating that environment isn’t easy, so
Ruscheinski, who is president and chief
operating officer for Edelman U.S. and
chairman for Edelman Digital, is constantly
thinking about what motivates her people.
And the more time she puts in, the more she
realizes she is at her creative peak when
her mental batteries are full, and maybe,
just maybe, it’s the same for the roughly
1,900 people in her charge. So while nobody
likes to see a good employee take several
weeks off, Ruscheinski and the other leaders at Edelman have been pushing for more
open ideas the past few years to give it an
edge in innovation. Edelman has been
focused on creativity for a long time, pushing beyond $200 million in fees early this
decade, but Ruscheinski, who is also on the
firm’s executive committee that oversees all
3,100 of its employees, is part of a new leadership breed that has focused on a people-first strategy to drive growth.
That drive has been built around two
things: the internal creativity in the office
and the space people need outside the
office to keep from burning out.
