The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) will bestow the distinguished title of Fellow on Diane Gage Lofgren, senior vice president of Brand Strategy, Communications and PR for Kaiser Permanente, tonight at a ceremony at PRSA's 2009 International Conference in San Diego.
"Being inducted into the PRSA College of Fellows is one of the profession's highest individual honors," said Michael Herman, APR, SAGE, Fellow PRSA, and 2009 chair of the College of Fellows. "It is with great pride that we recognize the lifetime career work and leadership of outstanding professionals who exhibit exceptional personal and professional qualities and have significantly advanced our profession."
Ms. Gage Lofgren has been in her current position at Kaiser Permanente for three years, where she is responsible for managing national communications, issues and brand management, and public relations functions. In this role, she leads the critical work of positioning Kaiser Permanente in the hearts and minds of the organization's key stakeholders, and leads all work associated with stewardship and oversight of the Kaiser Permanente brand.
The results of Ms. Gage Lofgren's hard work have been dramatic; there was a 246 percent increase in positive media news mentions 2006 over 2008, and a 191 percent increase from 2007 to 2008. She established a national speakers' bureau and issues council for Kaiser Permanente, and created an overarching message architecture to ensure consistency across the organization. She encourages the use of social media to communicate with external audiences, and under her leadership Kaiser Permanente instituted company pages on Facebook and YouTube, and the media team became active in the use of Twitter to reach key audiences. Early in her tenure, Ms. Gage Lofgren completed a re-organization of the communications functions to better align communications with operational efforts and organizational priorities. She and her team launched the Kaiser Permanente News Center to serve as a go-to source for internal and external stakeholders with timely responses to issues as well as broad-based information about the organization.
Ms. Gage Lofgren has focused on informing and inspiring employees, creating new venues to promote business literacy among her team members. She is an executive sponsor of KP IdeaBook, an internal social media platform to increase employee collaboration and productivity. Recently, Kaiser Permanente was recognized by PR News Online as one of the "Best Places to Work in PR."