An American Celebration….in Plzen, Czechoslovakia

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On May 4, 1991, the people of Plzen, Czechoslovakia, were celebrating "American Day" to mark the 46th anniversary of their city's liberation from the Nazis by General George S. Patton’s U.S. Army at the end of World War II. It was a major event, and I was lucky to be there to take part in it. I had arrived in Czechoslovakia on April 25 to begin a public relations campaign on behalf of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. At that time, my company was hoping to form a joint venture with a Plzen firm, Skoda, for the purpose of producing power generation equipment. When I heard about the American Day celebration scheduled to take place on May 4, I saw a PR opportunity I couldn't pass up.

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My Fifteen Minutes of Fame – in Bulgaria

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If we all experience what Andy Warhol called our "fifteen minutes of fame," I had mine in Bulgaria, a small Balkan nation I visited six times in the early 1990s. As a Westinghouse PR manager, it was my job to inform the Bulgarian media of my company's capabilities related to the country's nuclear program. I knew nothing about Bulgaria when I first visited in 1991. And, I soon learned, Bulgarians knew nothing about Westinghouse, as well. It was my mission to inform them, but it wouldn’t be easy. I survived tricky press tactics, highway breakdowns, dreary hotel rooms and the evils of grape brandy - and ended up loving this ancient country, its culture, and people.

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Castles, Kafka, Controversy: My Days in Czechoslovakia

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I touched down in Prague in April 1991 to launch a PR campaign for Westinghouse Electric Corporation - 16 months after the collapse of communism. And that’s when my real PR education began. Forging relationships with skeptical journalists is hard enough, but imagine the difficulty of communicating to audiences stifled by 50 years of communist propaganda. I wanted to communicate facts, but first I had to gain trust. Sometimes I felt a bit like a propagandist myself!

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Those Ukraine Girls – and Guys – Really Knocked Me Out

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Some of my most interesting work experiences took place in Ukraine on behalf of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. In 1994, I conducted a 3-day public relations workshop joining PR personnel, communications specialists and technical experts from my company and Ukraine’s nuclear organizations. People traveled from remote plant sites to attend this first-of-a-kind workshop. The Ukrainian people are very warm. At the end of our workshop women were giving me their personal jewelry to take home, so that I'd remember them. And indeed I do. We spent our after-hours singing, dancing, dining and drinking - forging friendships despite our communication barriers and that long, awful Cold War history that we all grew up with.

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