“What makes you think a girl can run a PR firm?” one of the heads of Abernathy MacGregor Frank scoffed when Joele Frank informed him in 1999 that she was leaving the communications firm to launch her own shop.

“Well, you did it,” she snapped. With a handful of other defectors, Frank launched Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher in 2000 and has built the firm into a leading franchise in M&A and activism defense communications, among other specialties, as Frank described on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast.

Frank came to communications by accident. She earned her M.B.A. while she was a research biochemist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and later worked on the 1984 breakup of AT&T Co. as a member of the telephone company’s treasury department before moving into investor relations. When AT&T moved its headquarters to New Jersey from Manhattan, Frank went to corporate and financial public relations firm Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart.

“We do communications through an IR lens, because it’s what I know,” Frank said on the podcast. She also discussed the firm’s growth. “We are structured like an old-fashioned lockstep law firm,” Frank said. “We have partners who have gotten equity. The founders did not keep the equity to themselves, so everyone makes a great living and there’s a growth orientation. We don’t have owners. We are the owners.”

Listen to the podcast with Joele Frank below:

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