PRWeek Coffee Break Steve Barrett, PRWeek

Prince talks about the return of Mexican Pizza, which blew up on social media when Taco Bell originally removed it from its menu in 2020.

Mesara talks about leading both marcomms roles at the 100-year-old cancer treatment center, which recently acquired Cancer Treatment Centers of America, thus extending its reach nationally to encompass 115,000 patients. She also talks about her long career in comms at pharma at Pfizer, Abbott and AbbVie and pharmacy retail at Walgreens Boots Alliance.

This week on Coffee Break, PRWeek editorial director Steve Barrett is joined by Arielle Patrick, CCO of Ariel Investments.

Ariel is the first Black-owned investment firm in the U.S. and currently has almost $20 billion in funds under its management. Co-CEO Mellody Hobson has long been a mentor of Patrick's, including when she was working on the agency side, first at Weber Shandwick, then at Edelman. She moved client-side at Ariel in 2020 and looks after a number of areas in her chief communications role.


Coffee Break topics:

- Detailing Ariel Investments

- Creating purposeful business in a world that’s focused on volume

- Corporate directors report

- Any surprises from conducting the report?

- Making sure the agencies you work with are doing what they say

Hoffman looks back at founding his agency in Silicon Valley almost 35 years ago and how PR has evolved over the decades.

Ben LaBolt talks about working on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and how skills learned in the political realm are transferable to the corporate world.