Mr. Finn has had an outstanding career spanning more
than fifty years as a key executive in the field of
public relations and as a widely published author.
As co-founder and CEO of Ruder Finn, Inc., one of
the largest independent public relations firms in
the world, he has been a leader in exploring the
ethical and philosophical dimensions of public
relations as well as in creating innovative
approaches that have enhanced its effectiveness and
broadened its contributions. He is also an
accomplished photographer of sculpture, a painter
and a writer on art, with over 70 books to his
credit.
Clients of Ruder Finn have included many Fortune 500
corporations as well as privately-held companies,
trade associations, foreign governments and
agencies, colleges and universities and
not-for-profit organizations.
Mr. Finn has played a major role in the work the
firm has done for international clients in France,
Greece, Japan, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden,
Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other
countries. He has been an advisor to the World Bank,
and in the United States has been involved in
programs for the White House, the United Nations and
various government agencies including the Federal
Reserve Board. He has written a periodic column for
Roll Call, the newspaper of the Congress, and
articles by him have been published in Forbes,
Fortune, Harper's, the Saturday Review, the Harvard
Business Review, the California Business Review,
Across the Board, Management Review, and Reader's
Digest. He produced a series of public service ads
on "The Art of Leadership" for Forbes magazine.
His book, Public Relations and Management, published
by Reinhold, has been translated into several
languages including Japanese, Spanish and Arabic.
The Corporate Oligarch, published by Simon &
Schuster, has also been translated into Japanese.
An
advisor to clients on major public issues, he has
counseled senior executives and government officials
on matters involving the environment, education, the
arts, public health, nutrition, minorities and the
economy. He has lectured and presented papers on
public relations and communications at the American
Assembly; the Conference of Science, Philosophy and
Religion; Columbia University Graduate School of
Business; Drexel University; International
Association of Business Communicators; American
Library Association; the Atomic Industrial Forum.
For many years he was adjunct professor of public
relations at New York University, and he taught a
course, "The CEO as a Whole Man," at the New School
for Social Research.
Books on art that Mr. Finn has written include How
to Visit a Museum, How to Look at Sculpture, How to
Look at Photographs and How to Look at Everything
(all published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.). His
photographic books have been devoted to different
periods of history, including ancient Egypt,
classical Greece, and western art from the 12th-20th
centuries. Mr. Finn's photographs and paintings have
been shown in several one-man exhibitions at the
Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, the Musee
de Cluny and l'Orangerie in Paris, the American
Cultural Center in Madrid, the Art Gallery of
Toronto, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
and in galleries in Chicago, Los Angeles, London,
Paris and New York.
Mr. Finn was formerly Chairman of the Board of Cedar
Crest College, and a member of the board of
directors of the Institute for the Future. He is on
the board of the Academy of American Poets; The
American Forum for Global Education; The New Hope
Foundation; MUSE Film and Television; and is
Treasurer of the Business Committee for the Arts. He
is a former editor-in-chief of Sculpture Review
magazine.
Mr. Finn is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and was appointed by President Clinton
as a member of the Advisory Council for the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
A graduate of The College of
the City of New York, Mr. Finn and his wife live in
New Rochelle, New York, and have four children and
ten grandchildren.
Looking At the Past and Into the Future: A Message From
David Finn
I once described PR as "an old method of
advocacy and salesmanship updated to meet the conditions of a
mass society," but that description now seems too simplistic.
Now I feel we need a new and more mature description of what PR
is all about.
After almost sixty years in the business,
it seems to me that the practice of PR is not simply a form of
advocacy and salesmanship, but rather an effort to help people
get along with each other in a complicated world. We
practitioners also try to help enrich people's lives with
meaningful insights and valuable information about matters that
can be important to them.
Now that PR has established itself as a
valuable resource for so many different kinds of people,
organizations, institutions, governments, our goal should be to
train our successors to be as knowledgeable, sensitive,
thoughtful, imaginative and creative as they can possibly be.
I believe there will be an increasingly
significant role for PR in the future. With the sound advice PR
people may give, and the effective means of communications they
are good at, they should have resources to help make a better
world.
In the year 2000, Kofi Annan, the great
Secretary General of the United Nations and a dear friend of
mine, pointed out that the 20th century was the most devastating
century in history, and he hoped the 21st century would be much
different. It would be a significant contribution if the people
in the PR business could play a significant role in achieving
that goal.
Living models outfitted in original designs and
accessorized with Sony's sleek new 1.4 pound VAIO Lifestyle
PC, are hitting fashion-forward neighborhoods in NYC.
A report by RF Insights and RF's Consumer Marketing group
suggests that consumers have heightening interest in hybrid
vehicles, despite dropping gas prices.
David Finn has had an outstanding career
spanning more than forty years as a key executive in the field
of public relations and is a widely published author on business
and society. As founder and CEO of Ruder-Finn, Inc., one of the
largest independent public relations firms in the world, he has
been a leader in exploring the ethical and philosophical
dimensions of public relations as well as creating innovative
approaches that have enhanced its effectiveness and broadened
its contributions.
Mr. Finn has been an advisor to the World
Bank and has been involved in programs for the White House and
the Federal Reserve Board. He writes a periodic column for the
Roll Call, the newspaper of Congress. Articles by him have been
published in Fortune, Harpers, the Saturday Review, the Harvard
Business Review, and Reader's Digest. He is also the author of
"Public Relations and Management" and "The Corporate Oligarch."
Mr. Finn is Chairman of the Board for Cedar
Crest College, a member of the board of directors of the
Institute for the Future; the American Academy of Poets; the
Institute of Applied Economics; the American Forum for Global
Education; the New York Center for Visual History; the New Hope
Foundation; the Printmaking Workshop; and MUSE Film and
Television. He is also an accomplished photographer of
sculpture, a painter and a writer on art, with over 50 books to
his credit.
