2026 STL | November Monthly Meeting

She’s helped big-name clients achieve their goals by being steadfast in solutions that help all parties thrive. She’s helmed invaluable growth across multiple PR agencies without sacrificing best-in-class employee experiences. And according to FleishmanHillard Chairman (former president and CEO) John Saunders, “She’s a rare breed who doesn’t just know the numbers. She knows the industry. And therefore, has deep empathy with our staff and clients while meeting shareholder expectations. Patti has it all.” 

Following her time at Cejka & Company, providing strategic counsel to large health systems, Patti joined FleishmanHillard’s headquarters in St. Louis. Her career instantly became a nonstop sprint to the top. 

Starting as a financial liaison for our New York and Boston offices, it didn’t take long for leadership to notice that Patti’s support wasn’t just transactional. She was building relationships, digging into sectors, and collaborating with our teams and market leaders to fully understand our work and the clients’ challenges and objectives to truly solve problems. This earned her an invitation to manage financials for our fast-growing Asia Pacific region. With zero experience in foreign currency and little exposure to cultural differences, she said “yes,” and jetted off to build in-person relationships overseas. She gradually grew her remit to include FleishmanHillard’s U.S. offices, then Canada, Europe and Africa. In 10 years’ time, she was running our entire network’s financials.  

When our firm set back-to-back revenue records in 2021 and 2022, Patti was global head of finance and operations. In April 2024, Patti became FleishmanHillard’s first female chief financial officer — a role she immediately redefined by holding herself responsible for more than protecting the firm’s assets, but for driving real growth impact and caring for each individual client, office and person at FleishmanHillard.  She won the PR Week 2025 Women Of Distinction Award.