Five Questions with PR Newswire EMEA CEO, Lisa Ashworth

“Five Questions” is a regular feature of DubaiBeat.com. Successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and companies tell us about their experiences and stories in a Middle East context.

Lisa Ashworth is the CEO of PR Newswire EMEA and has been with the company for five years. Prior to this she held MD roles within the Financial Times Group, Frost & Sullivan and spent her first 8 years working in leading Advertising Agencies in London. She lives just outside Guildford, England. She talks to us about PR Newswire’s new office in Dubai which was officially announced today. (Our researchers have exclusively revealed it before)

Would you please tell us briefly what PR Newswire is about.

PR Newswire is the world’s leading corporate news distribution provider. We assist organizations in each country around the world in communicating their messages to their key audiences such as the media, consumers and the financial community. Our new Dubai office will report to our EMEA headquarters, based in London. We will be working with PR/IR Agencies and in-house communication departments at companies in Dubai in supporting their communication distribution requirements.

Thinking as a PR agency and then as a publishing media like a newspaper, what would be the impact of your Middle East operation on their activities?

From the PR Agency perspective we will allow PR agencies based in Dubai to effectively and efficiently communicate their customers’ messages to a global market simultaneously. News releases distributed through us are sent to recipients unaltered, and formatted for various different platforms.

Now from a newspaper perspective. The media has relied on PR Newswire as a reliable, legitimate source of newsworthy announcements from reputable organizations. PR Newswire devotes significant human resource into the teams that produce the complex checking, legal verification, client authorization and quality of translations. Ultimately this makes journalists life easier by helping them find the information for the stories they are writing quicker and more easily because we integrate with their varied working systems and therefore increase their efficiency.

A company like Google has initially selected Cairo for its Middle Eastern operations. What were your reasons to choose Dubai?

Dubai is one of the world’s best success stories of modern times.

PR Newswire has recognized the synergy between our plans for building our global footprint and the vision Sheikh Mohammed has for the growth of Dubai. We see this new office as a launch pad to our expansion in the region.

Dubai is strategically placed in the centre of the world this will make it critical for PR Newswire as it expands locally, in Asia, in Europe and across the Americas.

You have many offices around the world. What was the reason of expanding your operations in the Middle East at this particular time?

PR Newswire’s EMEA management team has spent the last four years building its operation to create a robust and dynamic business. This has been completed and we now feel this is the perfect time to enhance our footprint further. Belgium, Dubai and India proved to be the three most exciting opportunities to dedicate focus to. We are confident of the success of this strategic move because we can open our doors from day one with a proven business model, a perfectly formed product suite and a strong commercial reputation.

Have you ever been in Dubai before? What do you think about the city and its future?

Yes many times. Dubai is fabulous. With our services everyone will know about it.