Rosanna Fiske

When Rosanna Fiske ’94 was 9 years old, she decided she wanted to become a journalist. “I would be in the darkroom with my dad as he was developing pictures of presidents and other hugely important people,” says this daughter of a photojournalist who traveled the world with his family. “I used to think, ‘Wow, to have that kind of accessibility into so many different people’s lives would be kind of neat.’”

Years later, Fiske, an award-winning public relations ace, FIU alumna and adjunct professor in Advertising and Public Relations, has made a name for herself in a field that, while it doesn’t afford the same accessibility, offers the variety she came to love as a reporter after graduating from FIU with a degree in journalism.

“I say to my students, if you really don’t think public relations has a huge influence on what you see, watch and do, really take a look at what you’re seeing, watching and doing because half of the stories that we see on television are introduced to the media by someone in public relations,” says Fiske, sitting in the Coral Gables offices of Communique Group, the full-service public relations firm she founded with Lourdes Diaz in 1998. Fiske switched careers after being offered a marketing job at double her reporter’s salary from one of the sources she interviewed regularly. “The core of public relations is not only to inform the public, but also to persuade or change public opinion, not necessarily just communicate it.”

Fiske has done it well, developing successful bilingual communications programs for local, national and international clients. She handled public relations for
Charles Schwab’s online trading launch into Latin America and American Airlines’ 1997 pilot strike. She was vice president of Ketchum Public Relations Worldwide in Miami when she took a leap of faith and launched her own firm at the urging of a client. In the 12 years prior to that, she had earned a reputation as a leader in multilingual, integrated communications in local, U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets. For Fiske, striking out on her own gave her a chance to reacquaint herself with all that she loved about the field.

“When you’re in a bigger agency and you grow in that agency, you spend a lot less time doing the actual work and more time just managing people and budgets and business development,” she says. “I really, really missed the strategizing with clients.”

In 2002, the Multicultural Communications Section of the Public Relations Society of America honored her with its D. Parke Gibson Pioneer Award, a prestigious honor presented to a public relations practitioner for increasing awareness of public relations within multicultural communities and participating in the promotion of issues that meet the special informational and educational needs of these diverse communities.

As she considers her diverse ethnic background (“I’m a Cuban Spaniard Chinese Jewish woman, and I don’t think many Cuban Americans can claim that,” she says with a laugh), innate interest in the world’s cultures, and life with a husband who grew up in nine different countries, Fiske is still awed by this accolade acknowledging her multicultural expertise.

“It has been pretty fabulous to join the company of previous winners such as Ofield Dukes, who was a member of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle and still remains a counselor to the King family,” she says. “To be recognized by my peers in this manner has been amazing and humbling.”