Public Relations Specialist: Renee Kelly

Renee Michelle Kelly was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Silver Spring, MD a suburb of DC. She has a degree in Communications-minor in marketing from Bowie State University. She started her PR career at National Geographic where she worked on major campaigns such as the annual National Geographic Bee, including state and national levels of competition hosted by Alex Trebek. Renee also Managed 5-8 book campaigns yearly such as God Grew Tired of us- a memoir by John Dau, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan and Visual History of the world- Douglas Brinkley. Part of the job as a publicist of course is escorting authors and spokespeople to TV and radio stations for in-studio interviews as well as media training. Renee then moved on to work as the Deputy Director of media relations at Home Front Communications a Communications firm in DC. There she managed pitch and media campaigns including, assigning duties to publicists, providing pitch guidance, managing campaign feedback and creating full reports for executives and clients. Some of the campaigns Renee was in charge of include working on Colin’s Powell America’s Promise Drop Out Campaign, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids-Youth Kick Butts Day and for American Cancer Society - Great American Eat Right Challenge to name a few. Renee works with all national media and has had hits on every major national outlet including GMA, The Today Show, The View, CNN; radio: NPR, Tom Joyner morning show, print: NY Times, Washington Post, and the list goes on. She currently handles all of the National media for the American Red Cross. She loves PR and coming up with new and creative ideas to pitch stories.