Looking back at his long career in communications, Tony D’Angelo, APR, Fellow PRSA, sees that his professional development turned a corner when he started caring about the success of the people around him.
“When you do that, and you bring that perspective to leadership, the better a leader you will be,” said D’Angelo. “And that can be immensely rewarding.”
D’Angelo received the 2026 Gold Anvil Award, the PRSA’s highest individual honor, recognizing lifetime achievement and exceptional leadership, Oct. 18 at ICON 2026.
A professor of practice, chair of the public relations department and director of executive education at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, D’Angelo previously held corporate-communications roles at ITT and Carrier. He was PRSA’s 2018 chair.
On Oct. 29, D’Angelo was John Elsasser’s guest for Strategies & Tactics Live, PRSA’s monthly livestream series on LinkedIn.
Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s Strategies & Tactics publication and host of Strategies & Tactics Live, asked what principles have remained constant during the various stages of D’Angelo’s career.
D’Angelo quoted public relations legend Patrick Jackson, APR, Fellow PRSA: “People want to be engaged, not told; served, not sold.”
Jackson’s adage “has been a touchstone for me throughout my career,” D’Angelo said. “You’re looking to engage, not dictate.”
When undertaking organizational changes, “Leaders and organizations tend to fly right to prescribing solutions,” D’Angelo said. “And that short-circuits what should be an iterative learning process for the organization. It should be collaborative.”
Leaders help others grow
Elsasser asked how Jackson’s philosophy applied when D’Angelo served on PRSA’s board and how his understanding of effective leadership grew during that time.
“It evolved from the idea that I should be focusing on what I’m doing … to a perspective that welcomes and encourages all voices,” D’Angelo said. “The leaders that I’ve admired do that, and it’s something that I continually aspire to.”
How does a good manager become a strong leader?
“A good manager does things right, and a good leader does the right thing,” D’Angelo said. “The best leaders bring out the extra in someone. Maybe they don’t even know they have it. I’ve had leaders who, to my undying gratitude, stretched me. It wasn’t always comfortable, but I am so glad it happened, because I wasn’t necessarily seeing that in myself.”
Elsasser asked how communicators who work with C-suite executives can find the courage to disagree.
To deliver what might be an unwelcome message, “You have to have competence in what you are doing,” D’Angelo said. “You have to have confidence in yourself.”
To back up your argument, “Speak softly, with loud data,” he said. “Leaders respect the data.”
PR’s progress — and AI’s challenges
Where has the PR profession made the greatest progress during D’Angelo’s career?
“With the advent of digital and social media, now supercharged by artificial intelligence, we’re surrounded by actionable data,” he said. “We’ve had to learn to swim in it. And I think that’s a good thing. It’s given us opportunities for measurement and analysis that didn’t exist before. And I think the profession is getting more comfortable with that.”
At the same time, as artificial intelligence ascends, “I worry about the phenomenon that’s been described as ‘cognitive offloading,’” D’Angelo said. “Rather than applying critical thinking skills ourselves, we’re gonna ask Claude for the answer, or ChatGPT. And I think that interferes with the learning process.”
He worries that AI will erode people’s communication skills.
“What we try to do in the classroom is equip students to answer this question in a job interview: ‘How are you going to add value to these AI platforms?’” D’Angelo said.
The answer “is that you have to be a professional writer and editor,” he said. “The differentiating value that we bring is professional communication.”
Here, D’Angelo takes part in our lightning round:
