Cathy Renna was honored with the 2024 Barbara Way Hunter Trailblazer Award at the New York chapter of the Public Relations Society of America’s annual Big Apple Awards. The annual gala celebrates excellence in public relations across New York. This year’s theme was “Collaboration and Innovation.”
“I didn’t realize what a big deal it was,” said the Montclair resident. Renna was about to get ready to leave for the afternoon gala in New York, held Oct. 30.
Renna has had a spectacular and expansive career. She was once a GLAAD (LGBTQ media advocacy organization) staff member. She now serves as communications director at the National LGBTQ Task Force, teaches at Montclair State University, and is a principal of the Target Cue PR firm. At GLAAD, Renna was responsible, along with her team, for shaping the media coverage of the Matthew Shepard murder and many other anti-LGBTQ news stories since.
“The coverage was so much better because Cathy Renna was there,” said Matthew Shepard’s mother, Judy, at the Matthew Shepard Foundation just days before the Big Apple Awards.
“I didn’t get here by myself,” said Renna. She speaks about people like Judy Shepard, her wife, Karen, her students, and her peers at GLAAD and the LGBTQ Task Force. She said that doing this kind of work isn’t easy. In a way, Renna was saying that influencing the media for and about the LGBTQ community takes a village. Once one is able to correct the narrative, it is imperative for consistency in that coverage of the at-large, diverse community to be solid, Renna said. With this in mind, the media activist of more than 30 years calls her work in communications “trauma-informed” public relations.
She thinks of her Montclair students when she discusses the impact of the media. Her class, titled “The Role of Media, Public Relations, and Communication Strategies for LGBTQ Equity and Advocacy” brings students from all different majors, from women’s studies to journalism. She teaches that stories like Matthew Shepard’s are important, but knows how difficult it is to earn and advocate successfully for the stories of our Black and Brown LGBTQ community to be visible.
“For these students, hearing these stories from real people, about the impact of the media on their lives [is important],” Renna said.
With future media activists in mind, Renna ensures her students know their history through the stories she has shaped for the world and those she hasn’t. She has brought in many families mourning the losses of their LGBTQ family taken by discriminatory violence. Her students have heard from the families of Sakia Gunn, FC Martinez, Tyra Hunter, Angie Zapata, and Brandon Teena — all members of the LGBTQ community lost to biased violence over so many years.
Renna is aware that many young people she teaches don’t know LGBTQ history. “For me [teaching] is about paying it forward,” she said.
Barbara Hunter, founder of the New York PR firm Hunter Public Relations, for whom Renna’s earned honor is named, made congratulatory remarks before Renna’s acceptance speech. “Cathy, I congratulate you, and wish you many more successful years.”
Applause thundered in the room for Renna and her historic achievements.
“Thank you so much to PRSA New York for this extraordinary honor,” Renna said in her acceptance speech. “It really means so much to win an award named after a pioneer.” She went on to thank her wife Karen, her sister Pat, her chosen family, and her colleagues, such as Rich Ferraro, now the chief communications officer of GLAAD.
“Communications for me,” Renna continued, “has always meant two things: Communication and community. For me, they’re inextricably linked to the work I have been able to do over the past decades. The most important and often challenging work for me has been maximizing the impact of those who put their stories into the public sphere, whether they’re spokespeople, whether they’re activists, or more often, individuals who never ask to be public figures, but find themselves in that position, whether it’s for tragic reasons or sometimes celebratory reasons. And our job, as all the folks in this room, is to advise, support, and in some cases protect those folks, and it’s no small feat.”
Online the entire speech is here.
