Sarah Kissko Hersh

Type A

Founder

Mixing Board

Mixing Board is an invite-only community of brand and communications leaders who share knowledge with each other and organizations that can benefit from accessing members’ expertise, experience and mentorship.

Community Member

Percepture

Travel & Lifestyle Division Leader. 
-Built market share, drove growth and created the narrative for leading brands
-Partnered with C-suite executives to increase visibility, hone narratives and prepare for major interviews
-Worked with private and public companies, those seeking acquisition, and preparing for IPO
-Created alliances with partner agencies to maximize marketing ROI and efficiencies 
-Highest employee and client retention in the company. 8-year track record of hiring and managing all-virtual teams.

Hospitality clients: The Broadmoor, Grand Geneva Resort & Spa, High Peaks Resort & Spa (Lake Placid, NY)

Destination clients: Peru, Wyoming, New Orleans

Attractions: The New York City Transit Museum, Shops at Columbus Circle

Travel intelligence platform: Skift

Executive Vice President

Gensler

Led PR efforts in the company's largest division including offices in New York, Boston, Costa Rica, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Oversaw press campaigns for projects including Etsy, Microsoft and Condé Nast.

Regional PR Director, Northeast US + Latin America

Weber Shandwick

Promoted 5 times in 11 years. Responsible for PR strategy for multiple travel + consumer brands. The Bahamas: led entertainment marketing work including major movie and primetime TV, corporate partnerships including Disney; New Orleans: led award-winning Agency team that brought tourism back after Hurricane Katrina; Canada: led Agency team for Vancouver Olympics; Fontainebleau Miami Beach: Helped re-launch the iconic hotel; US Postal Service: Harry Potter stamp launch among many others.

Vice President

Creative Consortium

Executed PR campaigns and special events on behalf of  YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago and The American Cancer Society of Greater Chicago among others.

Account Executive

Senior level PR Consultant and fractional PR executive Short-term, one-off, or long-term PR/comms help Ongoing, or on-call PR/marketing comms counsel 1.35 million monthly content views

I swoop in to help in 3 ways:
1) Consulting: Building, reinforcing or making your PR team hum

• Auditing and improving existing PR teams (or agency relationships) and structures that aren't working but you're not sure why

• Leading message sessions to develop or clarify your vision, mission, and key messages

•Guiding your in-house team to better manage your agency team

•Stepping in as Chief Communications Officer until budgets allow for a full-time role. I can even help find the right person for the job

•Navigating a challenge or opportunity that can't be met with existing team resources

•Serving as a bridge until an internal role is filled 

2) Training Sessions and Speaking Engagements 
•Topics include: Working with media, influencers + content creators; Crisis prevention and navigation; Building a presence on LinkedIn; Strengthening your approach to RFPs to get to more wins; PR fundamentals; The New PR Fundamentals; Personal Branding

•Q+A sessions to solve specific PR problems

3) 1:1 Coaching for PR newbies, mid-career or senior executives either on the corporate or agency side. I also help sales and marketing folks who are overseeing a PR function and trying to fake it until they make it

Signature attributes: 
Exceptionally quick on the uptake, High emotional intelligence, Keen hiring and management intuition, A sense of humor and level head during strained times, Straight shooter.

Awards: 
Cannes Lion Finalist, Winner of 25+ public relations industry awards for campaigns including the Winter Olympic Games, crisis work, product launches, major anniversaries, and even launching the world's largest cruise ship

Reach out with any inquiries
skisskohersh@typeaeveryday.com

If your organization isn’t ready to make a full time hire, you don’t have to be without a savvy, senior-level PR counsel. 

Type A is an agile PR and marketing communications partner providing a senior-level bridge to your communication and PR leadership gaps.

Every business needs a strong communications department, don't make communications the department you think about last

If your comms team pushes back on pitching something during this very crowded news cycle, they aren’t being lazy.

They are being honest.

And protective of the brand.

And protective of their hard-earned media relationships.

You're only as good as your last pitch. 

Media will start ignoring your emails if you keep sending lame story ideas, or pitching them news items unrelated to the breaking news stories of the moment.

Top 2% LinkedIn creator | PR + comms 1:1 coaching + advising, team training, consulting, speaking | LinkedIn growth expert

If you are interviewing someone for a PR job right now, steal some of my go-to questions:

-Where do you get your news from each day?

-What influencers and media would you target if you got this job?

-Which companies are doing PR right or what recent work has caught your eye?

-What opportunities are we missing?

-How do you research the appropriate media targets for a media push/campaign?

-How do you incorporate AI to help lighten your workload (follow up q: what are your guardrails for using AI)?

You need to hire a strong writer, no compromising there. 

But I’d only consider requiring a writing exercise if I were hiring for a junior role. 

Use things like social media posts, writing samples, or even the email correspondence during the interview process to assess the writing capabilities of mid or senior level candidates.

What good q’s did I leave out?

To any brand that just conducted an agency review: if a losing team reaches out for feedback, give them the courtesy of an answer. 

They just gave you a lot of free ideas and valuable, unbillable time. 

Yes, that’s the game. But six minutes of your time can provide value and even comfort to teams that fall short. 

When I was on the agency side, one time I lost to a team who brought puppies into the pitch.

I lost a few that were always going to go with the incumbent and it was never a fair shake.

I got better as sussing those out. 

Though I did steal a few wins from incumbents who were assumed winners. One of which we won on the spot—the walk off home run of the PR world.

But if I lost, I always solicited feedback. 

Not in a sour grapes “how could you possibly have gone with someone else?” spirit. 

I wanted to get better. 

I genuinely wanted to learn something. Even if the feedback stung a bit, I valued the honesty.

Some of my requests went unanswered, but most yielded valuable information that made my next pitches better. 

They also gave me a glimpse of what the process is like on the client side—stuck in an airless conference room all day hearing pitch after pitch (most quite similar) as they try to select an agency to marry that they’ve barely even dated.

Most agencies that reach out aren’t looking to be combative, they are just trying to get better. 

Try to help.

Anyone in a position to hire: let's keep an eye out for our veterans, who have had our backs their entire careers. Instead of skipping past their resumes if their experience doesn't seem perfectly linear or transferrable for the role, give them the courtesy of an interview. 

They've earned it. 

This is a highly trained and highly skilled cohort of professionals who are team players, accustomed to adapting to new situations, thinking on their feet, and operating under extreme pressure. 

Who wouldn't want someone like that on their team?

Thank you to the veterans who sacrifice comfort, time with their families, and lighthearted days to protect our freedoms. Thank you to their families who manage to move past the worry and exhaustion and hold down the fort while loved ones and partners and children are far away.

Even your quiet posts are working.

The ones you thought were failures because they didn’t get many likes or impressions or even any comments.

What they ARE doing is contributing to an archive of representative POVs and ideas that future clients or even employees can reference when they are trying to learn more about you.

So keep showing up. Even when it doesn’t feel like you are getting any traction.

You are building something. You are getting somewhere. Keep going.

Well, this is a frustrating development…

Earlier this week I noticed the customizable link in my LinkedIn profile headline disappeared.

Turns out it wasn’t a glitch. 

LinkedIn intentionally removed the feature from the Premium Career tier and moved it to a more expensive membership level.

When I asked customer service about it, they called it a “realignment.”

Here’s why this matters: in the past year, LinkedIn’s algorithm changes have already tanked visibility, engagement, and follower growth for everyone, even prolific creators (I’ve heard this directly from people with 75,000+ followers.)

And now they’ve taken away features we originally had access to, with no grandfathering.

It might seem like a small feature, but it’s not.

That customizable link drove visibility to my newsletter, my website, and my online courses (my next 4-part LinkedIn class starts December 2!). 

It delivered real value in large part because it was a call to action front and center, without requiring additional clicking or searching to find.

Yes, there’s a new "contact info" link to list your website and a few other options, but newsletter and course sign-up aren’t on the dropdown. It’s nowhere near as flexible or as visible as the original feature.

This platform has given me a lot: new business leads, great partnership opportunities, and some genuinely lovely professional friendships.

But the same engagement and audience on other platforms would be compensating their creators.

But for a business platform, it's yet another example of LinkedIn not making it easy to do business.

I'm sure LinkedIn will bury this message, but here goes: 


I'm offering my next LinkedIn Playbook course in a few weeks (details coming soon)

I want to make this the best one yet. So I created a 4-question survey to collect feedback and I'd be so appreciative if you'd be willing to take the time to fill it out. 

You can find the link 👇  Thank you!

Just in case you are one of the 4 people on PR who doesn’t follow Parry…

Established marketing communications and public relations leader who has worked on behalf of more than 50 client brands including hotels, cities, countries, states, cruise lines, spas, tour operators, intelligence platforms, CVBs, DMOs, Chambers of Commerce,  museums, non-profits, and CPGs having worked both in-house, on the agency side, for tiny start ups and enormous corporations.

Winner of 25+ public relations industry awards, including Cannes Lions Finalist for counseling clients and leading the teams that executed campaigns for: The Olympics, Crisis work including hurricane recovery, Re-opening iconic hotels, Celebrating New Orleans' 300th birthday with an avalanche of clips and accolades that drove record tourism, and Launching the world’s largest cruise ship with a press blitz so robust it was credited with boosting bookings for the entire cruise industry.

Known for fresh and clever creativity, high emotional intelligence, morale-building, keen hiring + management intuition, leveraging an integrated earned + digital + paid approach to achieve bottom line results.
 
Skills: Business-Driving Media Relations, Marketing Communications, Writing, Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Digital Media, Online Marketing, Crisis Communications, Reputation Management, Content Creation, Leadership

Founder at Crackle PR 🎙️ Text me for tech PR: 415.246.8486

💥 Today, Crackle PR introduces the first-ever AI-Engine Optimized (AEO) News Release Template 📄

It’s built for how stories are discovered in 2025 — by AI. 

And it’s free for everyone 👏

Just as SEO helped marketers “get found” on Google, AEO helps your news releases get found by LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.).

The AEO Template helps brands and PR pros create releases optimized for both humans and AI — with:

• Keyword-rich headlines & subheads
• Clear, concise paragraphs
• Smart quotes & CTAs
• Contextual links for AI ranking

👇

For years, I told brands to “pump the brakes” on umpteen news releases because it was largely pointless. 

But now?

When you have *actual news* they’re more valuable than ever:

AI systems scan and extract facts from published releases — company names, products, events, quotes — then cite them when answering user queries.

That’s why this new template matters: 

it helps your brand show up in AI answers when people search for what you offer 😇

And that means Business Wire, GlobeNewswire  & Prnewswire have more relevance than ever— with GlobeNewswire currently earning more AI citations than the rest, according to data from Muck Rack. 

Want to check out the AEO New Release Template? 

It’s easy: 

1. repost this post 
2. Write “ukulele” in the comments 
3. I’m joking 🤭

Free link to the template is in the comments. 🔗

This is the way ✊

Apparently I’m not alone in this, maybe it’s happening to you too?


I thought I had an eye infection but it turns out I just have dehydrated eyes.

My eye doctor told me I don’t blink enough because I spend so much time on screens.

He sees it every day. He said we all need to blink more frequently and more thoroughly. 

Hard to believe that’s actually all it takes. But I’m passing this along in case it saves you a trip to the eye doctor. 

PSA: Don’t forget to blink!

Here is a sneaky powerful question you should be asking all of the time:


“Why?”

Disagree with the direction a client or manager just gave you?
-Find out the thinking behind it.

Don’t like the terms of an agreement but the person on the other side is digging in their heels?
-Ask the reason for the inflexibility.

Want to continue the conversation after getting a no?
-Ask how they arrived at the decision.
.
.
.
Finding out why reveals motivations, fears, useful insights, and allows you to challenge assumptions or misperceptions. 

It can help you find common ground or reveal layers to a complex issue.

But there is a fine line between mining for more information and looking desperate or triggering defensiveness.

So the right phrasing can make all the difference.

If the one word question sounds too curt in the moment, try:

-May I ask why?

-What led up to that decision?

-Can you walk me through the rationale?

-What result are you aiming to avoid?

Asking why won’t always lead to there outcome you want.

But it’s always better than walking away wondering.

Yes, I understand the logic behind discontinuing the penny. But as someone who is 

(oddly, still) 

getting an outsized amount of encouragement from finding an unusual amount of pennies on the ground…

especially when I really need an extra boost of encouragement…

I sure hope they don’t disappear too fast

I’m not sure if you believe in this sort of thing, but I absolutely do. Pictured here is my ceramic oyster shell (bought in New Orleans, one of the best cities in the world ♥️) filled with coins and encouragement.

Since going out on my own more than a year ago, I started seeing loose pennies on the ground.

At first, I didn’t think much of it.

But it happened so frequently I couldn’t help but feel like they were being put there for me to find. 

So I started picking them up.

They showed up on the floor of my car.

In the aisle of a bookstore.

On the subway (I grabbed that one with a tissue).

It feels like someone out there keeps sending me little acknowledgements and motivations

On particularly tough maybe-I-should-just-pack-it-in-and-open-up-a-tshirt-stand days I sometimes find a dime or a nickel instead of a penny.

Honest to God as I was loading my luggage in the back of an Uber on the way to the airport a few months ago I noticed there is one permanently pressed into the pavement Directly. In. Front. Of. My. House. 

Sure. Could be absolutely meaningless. Or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Or something that happens to everyone all of the time and not just me.

But I’m choosing to take them as magical, divine “atta girls” and you just wouldn’t believe the boost I get when I find a penny these days.

taplio

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