The School of Communications dean will be one of six public relations professionals honored at a Dec. 3 ceremony in New York City.
PRWeek, a prominent trade publication covering the public relations industry, unveiled its 2018 Hall of Fame class this week and School of Communications Dean Rochelle Ford is among the six recognized “industry legends.”
Started in 2013, the PRWeek Hall of Fame celebrates individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the development of the communications industry.
In addition to Ford, this year’s Hall of Fame class includes Dave Samson, general manager of public affairs at Chevron; Harris Diamond, chairman and CEO of McCann WorldGroup; John Graham, chairman of FleishmanHillard; Lynn Casey, chair of Padilla; and Joanne Bischmann, vice president of communications at Harley-Davidson and president of the Harley-Davidson Foundation.
Ford and her fellow inductees will be honored at a Dec. 3 dinner celebration at the Grand Hyatt in New York City.
“This is a humbling honor, to say the least,” Ford said. “To be included in this inspiring class of inductees, which has shaped the modern PR industry, brings me great joy. I still can’t believe it is real.”
Prior to taking over as dean of Elon’s School of Communications this summer, Ford served as a tenured professor and chair of the Public Relations Department in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, responsible for all undergraduate and graduate public relations programs at PRWeek’s top-ranked institution.
Before joining Syracuse, Ford was a faculty member at Howard University for 16 years, mentoring African-American public relations professionals and championing the diversity agenda within the PR industry through research, grants, teaching and service.
A prominent speaker and researcher, Ford has led hundreds of presentations on multicultural communications and diversity, and her scholarly works have been published in Public Relations Tactics, The New York Times and refereed journals. She has received numerous accolades, including the Public Relations Society of America National Capital Chapter’s Diversity Champion Award and PRSA’s national D. Parke Gibson Multiculturalism Award. In 2014, she was inducted into the Arthur W. Page Society.
Ford earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard, a master’s degree from University of Maryland at College Park, and her doctorate from Southern Illinois at Carbondale. She is the mother of two sons, Michael and Malik Larkin, and a daughter, Raven Ford.