After a year in which The Holmes Report expanded the scope of its operations considerably, we are delighted to announce that we have added depth to our editorial team with the appointment of Aarti Shah as senior editor.

The move comes after a year in which we held our first Global Public Relations Summit in Miami—attended by more than 300 industry leaders from around the world; rolled out a landmark study on creativity in PR; and continued our efforts to benchmark public relations agencies, clients and work across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, via such platforms as the Influence 100, Report Cards, SABRE Awards and Global Rankings, alongside our extensive news, analysis, opinion and blog activity.

Aarti will now join myself and my partner and managing editor Arun Sudhaman to deliver news and in-depth analysis of the public relations business, with a particular focus on the west coast of the United States, the technology sector, digital and social media, content creation, and more broadly on innovation in the PR industry. She will be based in California, and will also be responsible for developing new products, including events, editorial and digital content. As a small company, we’ve always felt a loose definition of duties best fits our specific editorial mission, so Aarti will also have a role that involves her in most if not all of our existing properties around the world, and in expanding our Asia-Pacific business.

She brings an impressive background to that role: many of you in the industry will already be familiar with Aarti from her time as West Coast bureau chief at PRWeek. More recently, she worked at March PR, giving her an invaluable perspective on public relations and social media consultancy, to go with an impressive ability to break big stories and analyze the trends that matter.