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Welcome to our seventh Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Melanie Kenderdine , a principal at Energy Futures Initiative . RENEW PR President Ben Finzel has worked with Melanie as both a colleague and client over the past two decades. Melanie has held senior-level positions at the U.S. Department of Energy under two administrations. Most recently, she served as the energy counselor to Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis.

Welcome to our sixth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Bob Perciasepe , the president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) . RENEW PR President Ben Finzel works with Bob and his excellent team on the Carbon Capture Coalition (client). Bob is the very definition of the phrase “a gentleman and a scholar.” In addition to being smart, he is both savvy and personable. Bob’s career includes leadership roles in federal, state and city government as well as the

Note: This post was originally published by O'Dwyer's PR Report under the title " DC Group Promotes LGBTQ PR Jobs, Rights " on Thursday, July 12, 2018. It’s 2018. Equal marriage is legal in all 50 states. “Will & Grace” is back on the air. Ellen DeGeneres is a cultural and pop icon. Society is finally beginning to acknowledge the existence (if not always the value and worth) of bisexual and transgender people. A casual observer might think that LGBTQ people today enjoy both

Welcome to our fifth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Kateri Callahan , the new President and CEO of CMC Energy Services and former President of the Alliance to Save Energy . RENEW PR President Ben Finzel had the privilege of working with Kateri twice on groundbreaking communications campaigns in support of the Alliance to Save Energy’s work on home and transportation efficiency. Kateri is a recognized and respected leader on energy efficiency. To paraphrase the Barbara M

Our Collaborations program continues to power our growth and provide terrific opportunities for us to work with interesting new clients on a variety of projects. This effort, which enables us to work with smart, creative, unique advertising, marketing, events and fundraising and government affairs experts, also makes our work that much more fun. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a new collaboration that we know fits this pattern of expertise + fun. Our newest collaboration

Welcome to our fourth Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Bill Richardson , the former Congressman, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, former Secretary of Energy and former Governor of New Mexico. RENEW PR President Ben Finzel had the good fortune to work for Governor Richardson twice – as a congressional staffer and as a presidential appointee in the Energy Department. Governor Richardson is many things – a force of nature, a global “fixer” who has hel

This month, I’ve launched a new initiative, DC Family Communicators , to serve as a professional networking group for LGBTQ communicators in the DC metropolitan area. This DC group is based on a similar group in Atlanta and will share information and networking opportunities with our Atlanta colleagues. Our focus is on sharing job listings and announcing promotions and new positions for LGBTQ communications professionals in DC. The objective is for these efforts to help boost

Welcome to our third Common Sense Colloquy , a Q&A with Lisa Jacobson , the president of The Business Council for Sustainable Energy . We have been fortunate to work with Lisa and her terrific team on the launch of the annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook for the past three years. Lisa is an energy policy rockstar and has headed BCSE for over a decade. This month, we asked Lisa to give us a sense of the work she does and share advice about communicating in the curre

Welcome to our second Common Sense Colloquy, a Q&A with Dan Reicher , the executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University . We have had the privilege of working with Dan on behalf of an initiative on carbon capture for the past two years. And nearly 20 years ago, agency president Ben Finzel worked with Dan when he was Assistant Secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy

Hello and welcome back to our Fearless Fridays predictions. Before we offer a new prediction, let’s check in on Volume 2 from November 2017 . We predicted: Prediction 4: President Trump will "split the difference" on imposing solar tariffs in the pending Solarworld/Suniva solar trade case by imposing a smaller-than-requested tariff that allows him to try to please both sides. In this way, he'll be able to claim that he's going after China and supporting the plaintiffs by i

Welcome to our first Common Sense Colloquy, a Q&A with Marcene Mitchell of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) . Marcene is Global Head of Strategy and Business Development in the Climate Business Department of IFC . We had the privilege of working with Marcene and her team in 2016 on a partnership program designed to help improve linkages between IFC and key energy and environment constituencies. Last month, we reached out to Marcene to get an update on IFC’s climat

Today marks our third year in business. And what a three years it has been. From the optimistic feelings of 2015 to the hopeful caution of 2016 and the wild disappointment of 2017, the world is a vastly different place today than we ever would have imagined when we started on January 23, 2015. While there are certainly many reasons for hope as we begin 2018, there’s also a lot of concern about world peace, the future of American leadership in the world and the state of our en

Beginning next month, we’ll launch our new Q&A series, The Common Sense Colloquy , here on the RENEW PR blog. Each month or so, we’ll post a short interview with a client, former client, colleague, partner or other interesting person we think you might want to hear from. Each interview will feature a handful of questions designed to illuminate a perspective on an issue, share insight on a program or educate about a mission along with two "common sense" questions to help illu

Every year at this time, I try to set aside a few days for future business planning. This effort includes everything from organizing tax and accounting information to finalizing my business projections for the coming year and thinking about new resources and other business needs. It’s also when I develop new ideas for marketing or other activities for the firm. The relative “quiet” of the time between Christmas and New Years Day is really helpful for this kind of introspectio

Hello and welcome back to our Fearless Fridays predictions. Before we offer a new prediction, let’s check in on Volume 1 from August. We predicted: Prediction 1: We’ll see enactment of some form of carbon capture and storage policy by the end of 2017. [Full disclosure: We have a client in this space. This prediction is not based on any “insider” or other knowledge, but is simply a reflection of our insight from following this issue.] Prediction 2: We’ll see a renewed inter

One week ago, I had the opportunity to moderate a renewable energy communications panel at Renewable Energy Markets 2017 in New York City. Thanks to the contributions of three exceedingly wise panelists, it was a terrific, engaging conversation. Joining me on the panel on Monday, October 23rd were Kate Colarulli of CleanChoice Energy , Daniel Whitten of SEIA and Dan Reicher of Stanford . Our conversation touched on the challenges of communicating about renewable energy in

Hello and Happy Friday! With this post, we’re starting a new series of posts on this blog with our “Fearless Friday” predictions about developments in energy and environment policy, communications and/or issues. These predictions will be based on nothing more than our "best guesses" and our insight from 25+ years in Washington and experience working on related issues. That’s a long way of saying we could be way off with some (all?) of them. But that’s the fun, right? Here goe

In the more than two years since we launched the “ Collaborations ” program as part of the RENEW PR team , we’ve been working to tweak the model for maximum effectiveness. Part of that is ensuring we’re working with the right partners. Today we’re announcing a new partner that we’re sure will be a good fit, and not just because of their name: EnviroMedia is a national leader in environmental marketing and communications. The EnviroMedia team has worked with a who’s who of

Baseball season is in full swing (Go Nats!), but some sports analogies are timeless. One of our favorites is “building the bench” – for us, it refers to identifying talented team members who can help support a client’s communications program by being available when they are needed to be “called up to the plate.” Since launching RENEW PR in January of 2015 , we’ve had several occasions where we’ve needed “bench strength” to ensure we were able to fully respond to a client’s

Shortly after writing a blog post about Our Values in February 2015, I also wrote a blog post about Our Commitments . After Revisiting Our Values last week, I thought it would be helpful to confirm our commitments as well. Although the current administration is apparently still unsure if it will confirm our nation’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, we still believe acknowledging and addressing climate change is important. And that belief informs much of our work and guid

As I developed the initial structure of RENEW PR , I thought a lot about what kind of business I wanted to have and how I wanted to live my values and principles as a business owner. The opportunity to establish a firm based on them was a key driver in my decision to start the business. For me communications isn’t just a job, it’s a profession. And how I pursue that profession is rooted in my personal values and principles. A month after launching the business, I wrote a blo