Dan Keeney: “The boxing gloves photo is a metaphor for the communications fisticuffs that I occasionally am engaged in. Kind of goofy, but memorable.”

Dan Keeney (’84), president of the 450 member Houston chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), has earned a reputation over the past 10 years as an invaluable person to have around during corporate crises.

In 1997, while Keeney was working at the Portland PR firm Conkling Fiskum and McCormick, Warner Brothers’ “Free Willy” star, Keiko the killer whale, was at the center of an environmental and animal rights controversy. Keeney’s strategic communications plan helped resolve a dispute between his client, the Oregon Aquarium, and an activist group, the Free Willy Foundation.

“It was a huge challenge during this time,” Keeney said. “Our client was being cast as the evil corporate entity only interested in the box office.”

Keeney advised his client to come up with a contingency plan in the event that the whale could no longer be the aquarium’s main attraction. Not only did Keeney’s approach help the aquarium refocus its fund-raising efforts, it earned the organization a high bond rating later used to finance a $14 million expansion.

For his innovative work on the Oregon Coast Aquarium’s campaign, Keeney received the Creativity in Public Relations award for issues management and a PRSA Silver Anvil, the industry’s equivalent to an Oscar, for excellence in crisis communications. He has received three additional Silver Anvils for his work with the Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon and the Healthy Forests Alliance.

Keeney is now the president of his own firm in Houston, DPK Public Relations, which specializes in crisis communications. His advice has helped many of his clients overcome potentially damaging situations, such as layoffs, product recalls and corporate restructuring.

Pat McCormick, a partner at the Portland firm where Keeney worked in the late 1990s, said Keeney pushed his colleagues to do the best work possible by following four PRSA guidelines – research, planning, execution and evaluation.

“He’s the type of person who thinks about, and then employs, best practices in his own work,” McCormick said. “Dan is a ‘thought leader’ in the practice of public relations.” Keeney began his communications career as a broadcast production management major, due in part to his interest in Assistant Dean Steve Jones’ classes.

“He was a great influence on my decision to pursue the broadcasting phase of my career,” he said.

All of Keeney’s internships, however, were in public relations, including one summer spent working for the Coors International Bike Classic. He said his undergraduate education at CU was instrumental in preparing him for lifelong learning.

At the time he was about to graduate from college, Keeney’s brother was diagnosed with leukemia.

“I completed my final semester through correspondence courses so I could serve as the bone marrow donor for my brother,” he said.

Keeney traveled to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to be by his brother’s side.

“Today, the procedure is largely outpatient, but at the time it was highly experimental and required my brother to be hospitalized in a sterile bubble for 100 days. I was required to be there to provide platelet support for two months.”

In October, his brother celebrated the 20th anniversary of his bone marrow transplant.

Keeney said the leader of his brother’s medical team later won the Nobel Prize for his work with victims of the Chernobyl disaster, much of which was based on research findings that included his brother’s case.

After graduating from CU, Keeney worked in Chicago at WKRS-AM, then was director of news and programming for the Illinois News Network, where he managed more than 60 news and sports reporters and anchors.

He said that being a news director helped him gain insight into the inner workings of corporations.

“A lot of what I did was more organizational in nature, so I had an understanding of the business side of things,” Keeney said, adding that having information thrown at him minute-by-minute with constant deadlines also prepared him for the fast-paced world of crisis management.

In 1994, Keeney moved to Ketchum Public Relations in Pittsburgh. Since then, he has worked in Portland in high-tech public relations and was most recently general manager of a firm in Houston before starting his own company.

Asked about changes in the industry he’s observed over the last decade, Keeney said mass media influence has been greatly diminished and one-on-one communication has expanded through modes such as blogging.

“You look for opportunities to speak through the voice of other trusted individuals in those groups,” Keeney said. “It’s important to communicate singularly – people don’t believe the media as much as they used to.”

Keeney, who jokingly attributed his love of the news business to his paper route when he was 8, views his current job as “telling the story before the story.” He added, “It’s our job to help an organization identify and change problems when necessary, helping build bridges of understanding.”

Keeney lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with his wife, Julie.

dan@keeneypr.com