How I got here: Kite Hill PR’s CEO Tiffany Guarnaccia on the future of work

Raised by a single mother who taught her the value of hard work, Tiffany Guarnaccia, the CEO and founder of Kite Hill PR, learned important life lessons. She landed her first job managing an ice cream parlor on the Jersey Shore, and these experiences have helped shape her into the leader she is today.

Guarnaccia founded Kite Hill PR in 2013, and under her leadership, it has become an award-winning tech PR and B2B communications agency, recognized by Forbes as a “Top PR Agency in the US”.

A passionate PR pro, Guarnaccia began her career at the center of the music industry’s most disruptive years as a PR director at LimeWire and eMusic. She later became the head of communications at The Huffington Post. Throughout her career, The CEO and founder has been recognized as a Top Women in Communications by Ragan Communications, and most recently, a Top Woman in Media and Ad tech.

Guarnaccia is also the founder of Ragan’s Communications Week and sits on our Communications Week Board.

My first comms (or HR or marketing or whatever profession) was:

Throughout my career, I spent about a decade in-house and a decade on the agency side. I kicked off my PR journey in-house in a marketing and public relations role for a growing AdTech startup. My early start in this particular industry shaped Kite Hill PR’s initial client focus. In 2013, we launched as a specialist agency centered on the advertising, marketing and media industries. It was during that first job interview that I confidently told my future boss that in 10 years, I saw myself starting and running a leading PR agency. 

I’ve always had a passion for entrepreneurship, and that started well before my first comms role. My first job ever was managing an ice cream parlor on the Jersey Shore. I gained invaluable experience on what it means to be a team leader — I still reference lessons learned from that job with my team today.

It was in college that I fell in love with public relations. While I started in the ad tech space, I also held positions at two music companies (LimeWire and eMusic) during, arguably, the industry’s most disruptive years. I later joined the Huffington Post — a job in which I rose to handle PR for the Huffington Post Media Group in its entirety, including international editions — before founding Kite Hill PR. I like to say that the best career paths are not linear. Mine certainly wasn’t, and I’m grateful for every step and opportunity along the way because it led me to where I am today.

The moment I’m proudest of in my entire career is when I:

The moment I’m proudest of in my entire career is when we hit the 10-year anniversary of Kite Hill PR in 2023. I’ve been fortunate to celebrate so many business milestones with my team. The road to success is often paved with failures and launching a bootstrapped business and growing over a decade through some pretty volatile market conditions was no easy feat. We held a team retreat to celebrate together and focused on our value of collaboration. Since day one, “teamwork makes the dream work” has been a Kite Hill PR team motto. When we got together, we talked about how we worked as a team to accomplish big things like launching Communications Week (now Ragan’s Communications Week) and introducing the PR Sprint Workflow. We also talked about the work we’ve done with clients, from IPOs to product launches and more. 

It has been a journey filled with growth and transformation. In the past 10 years, we’ve transformed from a specialist agency solely focused on the ad tech and media industry into a leading B2B tech PR agency that spans many categories including climate tech and AI — and, even better, one that prides itself on a great culture. Our values of passion, candor, collaboration, agility and balance are infused in everything we do.  

The thing I’m most excited about for the future of my profession is:

Today, and in the future, I’m excited to continue to prove the value of PR through the work that we do and the experiences that we create. This topic comes up in conversations with even the most seasoned industry professionals and continues to evolve. The introduction of new metrics and AI-enabled measurement solutions is promising. In an agile and fast-moving industry, we continue to set the standard and demonstrate the importance of delivering highly strategic communications during business transformation and growth.

The most underrated skill in my profession is:

The best PR professionals I’ve worked with are skilled strategic thinkers, writers and media relations professionals. Beyond the basics and necessary hard skills, the soft skills are the ones that will help you excel in communications – namely being proactive and having an agile mindset. Agility is one of our core agency values, and any effective communications leader knows that proactivity is a guaranteed way to show your value as a PR partner and prove how in tune you are with your client’s needs. Good, proactive communications professionals consistently bring new ideas and opportunities to the table, stay ahead of their clients’ needs, and showcase how knowledgeable they are about their clients’ businesses. 

I’m inspired by:

It is an exciting time to be in PR. I’m inspired to be a part of a team that represents the future of the PR industry and aims to always produce best-in-class work. Today embodying the future of the PR industry includes embracing AI. We are at the precipice of tremendous technology-driven changes that we can embrace. For example, at Kite Hill PR we are committed to staying at the forefront of the PR industry. Currently, we use AI to complement our creative thinking and execution and absorb administrative tasks. Leveraging AI allows us to focus the majority of our time on high-value work, which ultimately leads our business and our clients’ businesses to attain stronger, more valuable business outcomes. 

I’m also excited by the way that we have reset the workforce to focus on the individual and have evolved our definition of the future of work. For instance, we pivoted during the pandemic to embrace the future of work and roll out a “work from anywhere” policy, ahead of most. Fast forward to today and our current business climate, our agency prides itself on our ability to help our clients navigate seismic shifts in industry cultures. Change is the only constant. It’s important to plan, readjust that plan, and continue to adapt. 

The key to excellence in storytelling is:

The key to excellence in storytelling is to remember that a good communicator is a storyteller, not a story spinner. When working with clients, we’re inspired by their stories and oftentimes start with the end in mind. For instance, our agency takes a unique approach to thought leadership. When we identify a moment where we think it’s pertinent for one of our client’s thought leaders to have a voice, we act like a journalist. We survey the media landscape and uncover the unique story angles that are not being told. We then ask that same executive some hard-hitting questions, working closely with them to build and define a messaging narrative, previously unseen in the press. It’s all about taking a bird’s eye view of the problem and working backward to solve it. 

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.