Welcome to Knight Talks, the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications talk show produced by students for student I'm Nicole Borman, a freshman studying journalism.

And our guest today is Oscar Sur University of Florida alumni who corporate communications career included senior roles at and Ford Motor Company, and serv as a head of corporate communica for Wells Fargo and Company.

Now he's the president of the New York office of Edelma the world's largest privately-ow public relations and communicati And we can't forget his first ca out of the University of Florida was as a journalist.

Hi, Oscar.

Thank you so much for being here Thank you, Nicole, for having me and Go Gators!

After graduation, you reported first for the Miami and the Orlando Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal.

What was your beat?

And what was it like working for these different news organizatio an important thing to point out is that when I decided to become a journalist, I also w to become a business journalist.

In fact, when I was a stringer for the Florida Alligator back in the day at school, I int wanted to publish business stori So I'd write about student entre and local businesses and busines And sure enough, my first job ou college was with an afternoon daily in Miami called the Miami that has since gone out of busin But when I got promoted to be a staff reporter there after serving first as a clerk, fetching coffee for and doing all kinds of grunt work, back in the days when we d file stories by, you know, PC, I got promoted to be a business journalist, and that started my journalism career.

I had a byline.

I was working at One Herald Plaz for the Miami News and then it went out of business and had the opportunity to get a job at the Orlando Sent Left home, left Miami and became a business journalist And so while at The Sentinel I m while covering an event for The I met the publisher of the Wall Journal and met him at an event that the Journal was hosting in And I saw all these people talki and I said, Well, you know what?

I'm going to meet him, too.

So I walked up to Peter Carne was his name and gave him- I extended myself, said hello and he gave me his business card and I followed up, gave him a ca and he gave me an interview.

He set up an interview for me to with The Wall Street Journal and so that's how I ended up at, you know, at the time was and still is today, I think, the best daily business newspaper.

That is some high-level networki Networking is and at the time, I didn't app how important networking was.

Networking is a fundamental skil for any career.

So this spanned 1986 through 199 was reporting a little different at the time?

Well, it certainly was.

The whole exercise of producing a newspaper was different.

I mean, in my first job at the Miami News, that was back in the day, where you know, you composed the story on a sort of, you know, CRT mach you know, a big heavy TV tube like word pr It would spit out these waxed copies of the story in their col called Vlocks.

You'd take it down to the compos usually by pneumatic tube.

So you'd put it in a tube, drop it into the tube, and it would go through these pn tubes and shoot out on another f to the composing room.

They'd unfurl these wax pieces o cut them up, and then paste them on a cardboa that later would get photographe and create the plate for printing off the newspapers.

That's how newspaper stories wer when I started.

And back then, there was not this thing called multimedia.

You picked a media.

You were either broadcast, you were either print.

But today's print journalist is an online journali Very often they're doing video a like you are today.

And really today's news media and journalists are very m and they represent the brands for the platforms they create co and they also represent their ow in a way that, you know, I had a back in the day, but, you know, it wasn't a brand, I would say q some of the journalists we follo That tube stuff, I thought that only happened in Absolutely happened.

Well and you know at the indepen Florida Alligator when we used to write stories on manual typewriters, literally that was on rolls of like, you know, this paper that basica we would cut out and glue togeth and you'd be editing these, you know, whatever, 2000 word stories and they'd jus long rolls of paper laid out.

But some of the finest journalism was produced not always to the merriment of the university, but great hard hitting stories that those Alligator journalists would produce and, you know, lit glue pot on the desk and manual typewriters and a lit of smoking in the newsroom, too.

Yeah.

Back in the day.

You then worked at the Miami Her Publishing Company as executive assistant to the chairman and publisher.

How did your journalism experien prepare you for this role on the executive management team Yeah, so that was a huge job and a huge opportunity for many First of all, I had the great pr to be the executive assistant to the Herald publisher at the t a gentleman by the name of Dave Lawrence, who is a great Florida Look him up.

He's won all kinds of accolades and has done really amazing work for the State of Florida in the area of early childhood d since his Miami Herald career.

A so just working for him was an incredible experi But because I was working for the publisher, that job was not a newsroom job.

I was not part of the newsroom.

I was part of the administration of the newspaper, so part of the senior management And so I got to see for the firs how H.R.

and marketing and finance and ed and circulation and legal all came together and worked as to put out the newspaper every d And so I went from writing about how sausage gets made as a journalist to actually joining the sausage making proce And what I discovered about myse was I loved it.

It was great.

And at the time I had been aspir to be a newspaper publisher myse But this was the late nineties and a thing called the Internet was starting to dis the industry in a fundamental wa You were beginning to see circul declines at major metro daily pa and classic advertisers like big department stores start cut back on their newspaper circ and big ads that they would stuf the Sunday paper in and just, bo drop it on your doorstep.

So all of that was unfolding.

And during that period, Dave Law decides to resign.

And I knew a gentleman up the ro in Fort Lauderdale who ran communications for AutoN at the time was becoming the quickly the country's larges retailer of automobiles.

And I met him when I was a Wall Journal reporter writing about companies in Flori And he said, hey, listen, if you to work for a real company, give me a call.

And when Dave decided to resign, that's exactly what I did.

I gave him a call, networking.

And sure enough, I met him for a few cups of coff and he invited me to become part of his corporate communications team, and that started my corporate PR So you saw that like firsthand e of the Internet taking over newspaper companies, like what was like the full of l how could you explain your own w like the effect of that at the t Oh, disruptive, which is a term that gets used a in tech circles.

But it was generally disruptive because I think newspapers of all sizes, but especially in major metro areas like Miami and Orlando, where I had the opportunity to w I should mention I also worked at the Florida Tim in Jacksonville, Florida as a fr when I was a Gator because I was lucky enough to get a scholarship that first freshman year, and it included a paid internshi So a wonderful experience.

Wow, I got to step up my game.

But anyway, and so, you know, I think newspapers were wrestlin consumers were beginning to chan their information consumption ha And advertisers, by extension, were beginning to explore how they were changing their adverti they follow the eyeballs and the Right?

And the net effect of that was it was disrupting, you know, the underlying busines models of journalism, something that's still playing o I wasn't alive at the time.

That's incredible.

So next you became the corporate communications director for Auto What inspired the shift away fro publications and what did the ro Well, the best way I would describe it is I went from telling stories and stories and reporting stories to helping people tell their own And what I discovered pretty qui once I was inside and on the PR side of the equation is that everybody's got a story individuals, entities, organizations, companies, and some do struggle with how to get their story out that reaches the marketplace, whether it's through earned mean journalism or paid means like ad And not everybody understands how journalism works, how news gets created and gathered, and and how news judgment actual So having been on the other side of the table and having been in a newsroom my for all those years, I quickly discovered that there was a lot of value in bringing those insights to a company, to an organization and to help people understand how media work.

The best of both worlds.

Several years later, you're the corporate communicati director at Ford Motor Company.

Were your objectives and respons at Ford very different than at AutoNation?

Different in this regard.

It was the first time I had responsibility for a team.

When I joined Ford, I joined what they called their public af team, and within that they had a global news team at t headquarters in Dearborn, Michig And I led the global news team, a team of about 35 people.

And they were responsible for do all the communications for all the classic corporate fu at Ford Motor Company: finance HR, labor, legal.

Plus we also published a media w for the news media and a lot of other cool stuff.

It was a really great growth exp for me because it was my first t leading a team, leading people, coach people to perform well, interacting with a full C-suite of executive at a Fortune 10 company, which Ford was at the time.

So it was a wonderful experience I mean, I'll never forget it.

That's great.

Wow.

That's like such a step.

What drove you to work for these companies over ot Well, I think at the end of the my story is an immigrant story.

I was born in Cuba in 1964 quite a bit, a while ago and left as a baby.

And I'm here only because I'm talking to you honestly, only because my dad, O and my mom, Marta, decided when they were 21 and 20 to get me out of Cuba.

They got on a plane, they went t They hung out there for a little until they could get enough mone to go to the states.

And they never looked back.

And so everything I've tried to has been in honor of that decisi because if not for that decision who knows what my life would have looked like?

It would have looked likely materially different.

So that's always kind of inspire to go to Florida, to University of Florida.

That was a big decision to go to to leave home and aspire for bigger responsibilities and bigger jobs it continues to inspire me today That's amazing.

My mom is also an immigrant.

And if she had not come to the United States, I wouldn't be here because that' she met my dad.

Exactly.

That's And I wouldn't have met my wife the Miami news not gone out of b because that's what forced me to move to Orland And that's where I met my wife, Everything happens for a reason.

Everything happens for a reason.

What were some of your proudest achievements at Wells Fargo?

Well, I think first, helping mak that merger as successful as pos leading a large organization.

So now the size of the team was much larger.

By the time I left Wells Fargo, nine years later, the comms organization was 450 p So we had all internal communica all external communications, int We had our own television studio and production capabiliti So it was a rather large organiz And, you know, that introduces another degree of complexity and other types of leadership ch that, you know, I'd like to think I rose to the so I'm very proud of that.

I'm proud of helping lead the te and helping lead the company through some difficult times, to Any company that's been along for any sort o duration, especially companies with more than 100 years of hist like a Ford Motor or a Wells Fargo, will encounter from time genuine issues and crises that they have to take on.

And that was certainly true during my time at Wells Fargo.

And I'm proud of the leadership I provided as I guided executive leaders and our commun through some of the toughest tim And that's something to be proud Wells Fargo is like a household so that's something incredible to be able to part of the leader I feel I've been very blessed that I've had the opportunity to some very big brands, starting with The Wall Street Jo you know, Ford and then Wells Fargo and even Edelman, you know, is known all over the in the communication space.

So I've been very blessed in tha In 2019, you became Executive Ma Director of Zeno Group, an integrated communications age Tell us about Zeno Group and their projects.

Yeah, so that was a very interes in my career.

I had been 20 years as an in-hou corporate communications profess and Zeno Group was a PR firm, a consulting firm, and it's actually a sister agenc to Edelman, a smaller agency.

And that was really my first ste becoming a counselor, or I should say a consultant, ri Because I was I was no longer in helping make the sausage.

I was now on the outside bringing really good ingredients my clients make better sausage.

And that's a different career, I think, being a consultant of professional services and in a consultant of PR services, but I've loved it.

PR agencies are very diverse in the classic ways, as you woul But also I think generationally so because we have lots of young ta we have late-career talent, and because of the diversity of the we get to work with, it's a very dynamic setting and environment.

Zeno Group is led by a great communications leader by the name of Barbie Segal, and it was a joy working with her and that team over there and it was just great fun.

Was transitioning from corporate communication to agency life sea I don't know if I would use the seamless, but I think the smarte thing I did is I just told myself, I'm starting a whole new career.

This is chapter three of my care My first chapter was as a newspa reporter, a journalist.

My second one was as a corporate PR professional for a publicly traded companies.

And now my third is being a cons a communications consultant.

And so I think that was a health to frame that opportunity because it opened my mind to learning new ways of working and new ways of bringing value through my talent And I think anybody over the cou of their career should be prepar for those sorts of transitions and/or expect them.

Right?

And what I have found is those t have typically been amazing opportunities to just learn new great stuff that serves you down Well, that's great to hear because as a college student mys you know, we have this idea that what we graduate with, you you have to stick to that for li So it's good to know you got cha I'm glad you brought that topic because, you know, like I said at the onset, I chos because I was going to be a journalism graduate.

Right.

I wanted to major in journalism.

However, no offense to Weimer Ha but I got my degree in finance i And why was that?

It was because of that internshi at the Florida Times Union.

I figured, Hey, I'm ahead of the I'm a freshman, I got a paid internship, I've go But this has been a big sacrific to come to college.

What else can I learn here while that would be harder for me to p you know, just out there on the or through experience.

And so I chose the finance degre because I knew I wanted to be a journalist.

So, yes, I think, you know, life comes with opportunities that you would never expect.

And I think if you look at those moments and size them up as the opportun and gifts very often that they a you can't go wrong.

The other thing, too, Nicole is also majoring in finance, allowed me to make frie that I would never have made oth I think in the school of Journal Kurt Tizell, Tim Page and Rick Smith are buddies of mi that are still my friends today.

And Mark Scherer can't forget Ma and we still have our text chat and talk about Gator games every and all kinds of other stuff.

And, you know, those are bonds I wouldn't have built, had I not you know, made a change in my li and pursued a finance degree instead of a journalism degree.

So not to talk anybody out of We you know, be open to possibiliti And it can have a really big imp on your life.

Yeah, I saw on your LinkedIn it said business of finance and I was like, wait a minute.

Like, he was a reporter.

It's great to hear that you know especially just got here freshma fresh start, and it's nice to kn life can change.

Well, and listen my oldest son, Louis, got his degree in communications at Rutgers University.

But he's a corporate risk profes at Bank of America.

So you know, your major doesn't define you.

You know, you define your journe Right?

You hear that; your major does not define you.

So in 2021, you moved to Edelman, New York.

Give us an overview of the servi Edelman provides to their custom And as president, what are some of your biggest ch Edelman is the world's largest privately owned communication co 1 billion in annual revenue, 6000 employees around the world in more than 60 offices, and the largest office happens to be the New York offic where we have more than 800 empl And Edelman is distinct in that it's truly a full service integrated communications agency integrated in that it does a fair amount of marketi It does a lot of PR.

PR is its r And it also knows how to bring those two worlds together as the do come together through things social media and digital communi So we have practices that speak to all those areas and also I think areas like purpose and impact and social impact, which is increasi an area of tremendous focus in our world today as we tackle like climate change.

We have a whole arm of the compa that is set up to do financial communications, investor relatio and financial services communica So it's a group called Edelman S We have a practice of people inside the agency that are principally focused on multicultural work, because increasingly our clients, big, medium and sma are recognizing that Main Street America is multicultural America It's black, it's brown, it's yel it's straight, it's gay.

It's everything that you see on any street corner in the world, in the US today and on any college campus as wel And brands and companies want to connect with those consu and those individuals and in authentic ways.

And so our professionals in that multicultural practice help make that happen.

That is g The company covers a bigger umbr I think, than like I was prepare So how do you see the communicat changing?

So, you know, there's some class that I don't think will ever cha You know, how do you articulate and a story?

How do you use communications as to accomplish objectives, whether your objective is to sell more sweaters or to save the world from a global threat?

Right?

Communications as a discipline h to play all along that spectrum, I think the tactics and some of we use keep evolving.

When I started out in the busine the internet was just starting.

But for a fair amount of my care there was no such thing as Twitter or Facebook or even G if you can imagine a world pre-Google, right?

And now you're seeing things lik the disruption of television continuing with all the cord cut But the A.I.

Yes, the artificial intelligence Yeah.

You know, you can spit in a ques it can spit out a term paper jus The pace of change, if anything has really been diff it's the pace of change is faster than ever before.

You know, I mean, when I was on it might be a week before I talked to my parents be you know, I was outside of the d And if I was outside of the dorm they couldn't reach me because I didn't have a phone.

Now I can reach my daughter or any of my kids anytime I want And your parents likewise as wel technology and tools we have ava So that has accelerated the pace of just about everythin And so I think that will continu and there will be more disruptiv I think facets of life that as communications and PR professionals and journalists for that matter well need to na and record and figure out how to influence.

What advice would you give to those entering the communication Well, one piece of advice that I give everyone is read.

Read.

Read.

You know, and read anything.

Read what interests you.

But the journey of learning should never end.

Once you allow it to end, I think you're done.

So keep reading.

I started that habit many years I wish I had been a better reade when I was in high school.

But as an adult, I think I've been a fairly good and I've always found it very en And some of the books I've read have contained some of the best I've ever had as well, too.

The thing right after that is wr write, write.

You can see in the workplace that people who can express them through their writing and commun things well, they have a leg up everybody else, I think.

And, you know, I see that because they often hi people like me, you know, sometimes to write that stuff an figure out how to articulate thi So the value of being able to articulate things well is pow And I wouldn't underestimate it.

Well, thank you so much for your and your time, Oscar.

It has been great.

Go Gators.

Its been a wonderful day on cam and thank you for having me.

And thank you to our viewers joi Until next time, goodnight.