Rob Flaherty is President and a Senior Partner of Ketchum, the global public relations firm with 102 offices and affiliates worldwide.  Mr. Flaherty serves on the agency’s Worldwide Executive Committee and is responsible for the agency’s Global Research Network. As a client counselor, Mr. Flaherty’s areas of specialization are corporate positioning and issues management.  He frequently leads collaborative sessions with company executives designed to arrive at overall positioning, “message architecture” and competitive de-positioning strategy.  Also, he has helped companies prepare for and respond to challenging situations ranging from product liability and airline accidents to data security and anti-trust litigation.

He led a team that provided crisis management and global media relations support for the 2006 G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, which was attended by 2,500 credentialed journalists.  In 2008, 2004 and 1996 Mr. Flaherty led teams providing crisis management support for the Olympic Torch Relay.

Mr. Flaherty is on the board of the Institute for Public Relations and serves on the Agency Management Committee of the Council of Public Relations Firms.  He is an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America and is also on the board of the Economic Crime Institute, which focuses on research and solutions to address cyber crime and identity theft.

Mr. Flaherty joined Ketchum in 1989 after five years at Burson-Marsteller in New York, where he was vice president/group manager.  Prior to that, he was director of public relations for the F.X. Matt Brewing Company in Utica, New York.

Mr. Flaherty is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Utica College.