The Founder Of WhitPR Parlayed Her Successful PR Agency Into A Podcast And A Women’s Summit

Dreena Whitfield-Brown shares why she launched How I Got Here and why it’s essential for us to tell our stories

Dreena Whitfield-Brown, the founder and CEO of PR agency WhitPR, which provides public relations, experiential marketing, social media management, and talent management, always aimed to amplify stories that support the advancement of marginalized communities.

But she never anticipated she would be telling those stories as the host of her own podcast, How I Got Here, which “goes beyond the highlight reel with Black women founders, executives, and leaders” to get to the “real conversations about the pivots, the setbacks, and the purpose behind the work.” Or that the podcast would spawn a live event connecting Black businesswomen in her home state of New Jersey.

“I really love telling people’s stories who often get overlooked, especially us,” Whitfield-Brown says. “So that’s how the How I Got Here podcast started, and that’s why the How I Got Here Summit is here.”

At the recent How I Got Here Summit, Whitfield-Brown walked BLACK ENTERPRISE through the evolution of her PR agency and shared her insight on how we all benefit when Black women entrepreneurs open up about their journey:

When you launched your PR agency, did you wish you had access to the kind of stories you’re helping to tell now?

When I started WhitPR—this September, it’ll be 16 years— I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I didn’t have any business mentors. I didn’t know how to write a business plan. I didn’t even know how to really launch an agency. So Google was really my lawyer, my accountant, my assistant, everything.

I’ve found, as I’ve grown in business, that we don’t tell our stories—tell like the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. We like to show the end result, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I got all these awards, I got these accolades, I got all these amazing clients.’ But no, tell me about when your account is negative $3,000. Or when somebody just ends your contract without telling you. Or you lose a really good assistant or team member that you’ve poured it into. Tell me about that. How did you bounce back from that? Because I’m still trying to figure it out.

There’s a lot of women that I know that are looking to start businesses, that are starting businesses, that have been successful, and they’re going through the same thing. So I want to tell those stories, because it’s relatable.

When did you know that you wanted to do a podcast centered on founder stories and the stories behind the brands?

I was kind of pushed into it by my producer. She’s worked with me for, I want to say, five years, first as a client, then we became friends. She was working in a digital marketing space, so she helped us with social media for some of our clients. WhitPR is really all about amplifying Black stories. But typically, a lot of our clients are Black female founders, CEOs, and executives. And so she was like, ‘You need to turn this to a podcast.’ And I was like, you know, I don’t like being forward-facing. I like to wear all black. I like to be behind the scenes. But once I did it, I just loved it, because I am also quite nosy, so I like to know the journey of people that I admire.

What did you need to add, business-wise, to expand from a PR agency to a podcast, and now to orchestrate a summit?

You have to have a really good team around you. I’ve had some really amazing women that have come into my life and have poured into me, prayed for me, prayed for my business, prayed for this time, and have prayed for today. I wouldn’t be here without them.

Like my client who became my podcast producer—anything that I want to do, she’s like, ‘let’s do it.’ And she’ll come up with the branding; she’ll come up with all these ideas. There’s another former client who became one of my really great friends, who I know knows how to do things like this. Then there’s an event designer here in New Jersey who gets it done. You have to bring in people that know how to do things that you don’t know how to do. I have these dreams, I have these visions, but I need people to help me execute them. I think it’s just having a really solid team.