The PR 50: The best public-relations people in the tech industry in 2016

Business Insider

Journalists and public relations professionals have a notorious love-hate relationship.

PR people have been known to "spin" reporters (giving information that may or may not be 100% truthful) or bombard journalists with irrelevant emails, press releases, and phone calls.

On the flip side, journalists are a difficult, surly, and cantankerous group of people to work with.

But there are PR people who do know their jobs. Who do understand news. Who do work to uncover important stories at their companies. Who do handle the difficult questions and investigations honestly.

These are the people that make a journalist's work immeasurably better. The following list is comprised of people who are influential in the tech industry and have proven themselves to be good partners to tech journalists, according to the tech journalist community.

We received almost two hundred nominations and narrowed that down to 61 semi-finalists, from which this final 50 were selected.

And once a year, we dedicate a much deserved shout-out to them all.

No. 50: McKenzie Mae Haggard, Method Communications

McKenzie Haggard is becoming a well-known face in Utah's cozy but blossoming tech community. 

She's helped put Utah's "unicorn" startups on the Valley map, including Qualtrics, Pluralsight, and Vivint.

"She's just a very nice person who will go the moon to help you with your stories," one journalist says.

Her background is in fashion and entertainment, and she lives in Salt Lake City, so she's had to work hard to break into the insider-y world of Silicon Valley PR and tech journalism.

Still, she managed to get Good Morning America and The Today Show to cover her client, online gift card marketplace Raise.

And she's known around the office as the one who got Buzzfeed to write about men's underwear using a high tech fabric from a startup called Stance.

No. 49: Deborah Roth, OpenX

Deborah Roth is the former top communications pro at Pandora and at Fab.

The true test of a PR pro isn't how well they spread a company's good news. It's how they handle tough questions from journalists when things are rough.

She earned her street cred with tech reporters for managing communications at two companies who were struggling.

She's since moved on to OpenX, a company on the upswing as an an independent programmatic advertising marketplace that helps publishers grow their revenues through digital ads.

One journalist describes Roth as "very helpful."

Little-known fact: Roth lived in Hong Kong for two years in the 1990s and speaks Cantonese.

No. 48: Corinna Pieloch, Moxie Group PR

Corinna Pieloch is known as "one of the most insightful and thoughtful PR people" in the industry these days, one tech writer tell us.

She's known for her work with companies like DogVacay, AppLovin, and Dollar Shave Club. 

In fact, after over three years of working with Dollar Shave Club, she was thrilled to help announce its $1 billion acquisition by Unilever in July.

DogVacay also leads to a lot of fun PR campaigns. She helped them do a post where they used dogs to recreate famous scenes from romantic movies for Valentine's Day. That post went viral, seen by about 70 million people. 

When she's not working, she's obsessed with finding a good Italian meal, or cooking one herself. Her signature dish is Penne alla Vodka.