Andy Polansky Is Opening Doors for the Next Generation of Communications Leaders

I have known Andy Polansky for a long time, and if you know Andy, you know how much he cares about this industry and its people. He has had one of those careers most people in communications know well, but what I have always appreciated about Andy is that he has never made it just about his own career. He gives back, he stays involved and he genuinely cares about who is coming next.

That is why I was so interested when I learned that Andy had established the Polansky Future Leaders Fund at Page, and why I wanted to sit down with him and talk about what he hopes it can accomplish.

The fund will support Page’s Future Leaders Experience, its signature executive education program for communications professionals who aspire to become CCOs or who have been identified by their organizations as having the potential to get there. It is already an established and successful program, but Andy sees an opportunity to help Page continue to build it, keep it current and, importantly, make it accessible to more of the people who should have the chance to participate.

For Andy, there is also a very personal connection.

Page has been an important part of his own career, and when we started talking about why he created the fund, he went right to the point.

“I’ve always believed it’s critically important for us as leaders to invest in the future,” he told me.

That sounds like Andy.

He has had an extraordinary career, including leading Weber Shandwick globally, but when I asked him about the people who had opened doors for him, he immediately started talking about other people. He mentioned Harris Diamond and Jack Leslie, and cited his long partnership with Gail Heimman, along with the many colleagues he worked with throughout Weber Shandwick and the former IPG community.   He also talked about how fortunate he felt to have worked with a global team he considered the best in the business.

I think that appreciation for what other people contributed to his own journey is a big part of what is behind this fund.

One thing Andy said during our conversation really stayed with me. He talked about the need to create “more on-ramps” for future communications leaders.

Not every organization is in a position to fund someone through an executive education program like the Future Leaders Experience, and that means there are talented people in our industry who simply may not get the same opportunities as someone working inside a larger or better-resourced organization.

Andy doesn't believe the answer is necessarily making the room bigger.

“We don’t necessarily need a bigger room, but we need more on-ramps,” he said.

I love the way he put that because we spend a lot of time in this industry talking about the next generation, but access matters. It is one thing to tell talented people to work hard and develop their skills, and another to make sure they actually have opportunities to learn from senior leaders, build relationships with peers and get the kind of experience that can prepare them for the CCO role.

That is an important part of what Andy hopes this fund can do.

He wants to help Page broaden the pipeline of future CCOs, make it more global and more diverse, while giving people who might not otherwise have access to a program like this an opportunity to participate.

The fund will also help Page continue to strengthen the Future Leaders Experience itself. The communications business is changing quickly, and the program has to change with it. The funding can be used to keep the curriculum contemporary and more global in scope, bring in experts and make sure the experience reflects what tomorrow’s CCOs will actually be facing.

And there is certainly plenty to prepare them for.

Andy believes the CCO role has never been more important. CEOs and boards are thinking about reputation risk in a very different way, while communications leaders are dealing with an increasingly complicated mix of stakeholders, business issues and technology considerations

Of course, we talked about AI because you really cannot have a conversation about the future of communications today without talking about AI. Andy believes future CCOs absolutely have to understand the technology and its impact on business, but he also kept coming back to something much more basic: judgment.

The world may be changing, but some of the things that make a great communications leader have not changed at all. Andy talked about empathy, being an active listener, understanding the business, building strong teams and knowing how to bring people along. For the CCO specifically, he talked about helping to model the  character of the organization, earn substantive engagement and trust from key stakeholders and being able to help steward a company through change.

That is wisdom worth passing along, and it is another reason I believe an investment in developing future communications leaders matters so much right now.

Andy also believes strongly in something Page has always done very well: bringing people together and giving them a community of peers they can learn from over many years.

I don't think we can underestimate how important that is. You can learn a tremendous amount in a classroom or an executive program, but there is also enormous value in knowing people who understand what you do, who have faced some of the same challenges and who you can call when you need another perspective. Andy sees that network as an important part of the Future Leaders Experience and of Page itself.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Andy what excites him most about the future of this industry.

His answer was classic Andy: “Everything’s cool about this industry.”

He spends a lot of time these days talking with younger people, including college students and people just starting their careers, and he knows there is anxiety about AI and what it could mean for jobs. But what he sees when he talks with them is energy and enthusiasm, and people who are intellectually curious and want to make a difference.

Andy remains incredibly positive about communications as a career, and his advice is pretty simple: work hard, take initiative, listen, build your network, understand the business and pay attention to what is happening in the world around you. Don't just become good at the technical side of communications. Learn what keeps your CEO or your client awake at night and understand enough about the business to help them think through it.

That is how you become the person management wants in the room, and it is also why programs like the Future Leaders Experience matter, because we are asking more and more of our CCOs and need to make sure the people who will fill those seats in the years ahead have the preparation, relationships and judgment to do the job well.

What I also appreciate about the Polansky Future Leaders Fund is that Andy did not create it as a one-time gesture. It is intended to have what he called a “sustaining impact,” giving Page the ability to continue investing in the program and adapting it as the needs of future leaders change.

I started my conversation with Andy by telling him that, for me, so much of what we do comes back to purpose and giving back, and I know he feels the same way.

After talking with him, I think that is really what this fund is all about.

Andy has already contributed so much to this profession through the businesses he has led and the people he has worked with, mentored and encouraged over the years. Now he is putting something in place that can help people he may never even meet, rising leaders who, with the right support, can step into the CCO role leading communications for some of the world's most important organizations. 

I think there is something very special about that, especially at this point in Andy's career, because he could easily look back and be proud of everything he has accomplished, but instead he is looking ahead and asking what he can do for the people coming next.

That is Andy Polansky, and that is why I consider him a role model. We need great leaders in this industry, but we also need people who care enough about its future to help create the next generation of them, and Andy is doing exactly that through a fund that can keep opening doors for years to come.

I am very glad Page, and our profession, have him in our corner.