Blog

What Agency Leaders Are Navigating Today: Insights from PRSA Counselors Academy 2026

Posted by admincarolyn on Apr. 29, 2026  /  Blog, Thought Leadership  /  Subscribe 0

Las Vegas has built a strong and growing agency community, with more than a quarter of PRSA Las Vegas Valley Chapter members working on the agency side. That presence continues to shape how we approach client service, team structure and the evolving expectations of communications professionals.

This year, three leaders from our local market attended PRSA Counselors Academy, one of the organization’s premier experiences for agency owners and senior leaders. The 2026 conference, themed “Surfing the Wave: Leading Agencies with Purpose and Precision,” is tailored for those running agencies, but many of the conversations extend far beyond ownership. They speak to how teams operate, how we show up as counselors to clients and how the role of communications is evolving.

Below are a few takeaways from their experience. 

Gina Yager | GYC Vegas PR

Gina shared several reflections following this year’s conference, centered on how agencies are evolving and what it takes to stay competitive:

• The agencies that will thrive in this environment are the ones willing to get radically honest.  About their value, their clients, their people, and their own role as leaders. That thread ran through nearly everything I heard.

• AI is reshaping how clients think about what they need from us. Increasingly, clients believe they can handle strategy and execution themselves using AI tools and freelancers, which is putting pressure on traditional agency offerings and making pricing conversations more aggressive. The answer isn’t to panic — it’s to reframe. Agencies that can clearly connect their work to client profits will be seen as an investment. Those that can’t will be seen as a cost. The shift is from selling services to selling outcomes: the specific game you help your clients win.

• Most agencies don’t stall because of a lack of opportunity — they stall because of a lack of clarity. And often, the founder is the bottleneck. The challenge put to all of us was to stop asking “how will I do this?” and start asking “who can own this?” Paired with a ruthless focus on the 20% of clients and work driving real results, and a move from vague annual goals to concrete 90-day execution plans, it’s a mindset shift that can genuinely change how an agency operates.

Rina Foster, APR | 84 Communications

Rina shared that what stood out to her the most wasn’t about keeping up, but about stepping back, getting clear on what matters, and leading with more intention in how we show up for our clients and our teams. 

• The disruption we feel is permanent. Across sessions, roundtables and hallway conversations, one of the clearest threads is that communications professionals, whether agency or in-house, are operating in a fundamentally different environment than even a year ago and this is a structural shift. It’s not a reset that’s temporary. AI is accelerating output, clients expect more value, the definition of “news” is changing and people are getting information through Substacks, podcasts and independent creators. Agency owners have to stay agile, remain relevant and understand that this is now a permanent way of operating.

• Value is moving from output to judgment. Speaker Kate Finley put it plainly: the question has shifted from “how long did this take?” to “how good is the result?” The agencies that will survive and thrive aren’t the ones producing the most – they’re the ones whose thinking can’t be easily replicated. We have to focus on thinking, advising and connecting work to meaningful outcomes.

• Invest in people. The best agencies are investing in their people and ensuring they have clarity in all aspects of their work and strong systems. One session reframed what’s failing when team members underperform as usually a gap in context (they don’t understand the bigger picture), capability (they haven’t seen what “good” looks like), or confidence (they don’t believe they can do it.) Every team member needs to feel heard, hugged and helped. The speaker commented that it’s not soft, it’s leadership, and it directly impacts performance, retention and results.
  
  

Allison Monette-Cordova | Cordova Creative

Allison’s takeaways centered on one dominant theme: how AI is actively reshaping agency operations and what that means in practice.

• Agencies should be developing an AI informed business strategy. Some clients are requiring the use of AI and it is important to incorporate language into contracts to clarify how AI is being used in our daily practice – strategy, creative executions, etc.

• In addition to contracts, does your agency have an AI policy for internal use? How are we effectively using AI, ensuring that a human is still involved for the benefit of clients. AI drafts, the human refines. 

• Across the board, agency owners emphasized the same fundamentals: let data inform your decisions, get the right people in the right seats, invest in yourself to grow others, invest in the right systems and softwares, define and find your ideal clients, and make traction a priority. 

From AI to growth to leadership, Counselors Academy reinforced a consistent theme: agency success is increasingly tied to clarity – how teams define their value, structure their work and make decisions about where to focus.

Return to list