Scholarship Defines Firm’s Legacy

Cecilia Wilkinson, who died in 2006, was a founding member of PondelWilkinson Inc., having joined the predecessor firm following her graduation from the University of Southern California, and enjoying an illustrious investor relations and corporate public relations career that spanned 25 years.

A nationally renowned industry leader, Cecilia has been honored since 2007 with an endowed scholarship fund in her memory for graduate students at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Dale Legaspi, recipient of the 2014 Cecilia Wilkinson Memorial Scholarship, during a staff meeting at the offices of PondelWilkinson in Century City.

Each year, the Cecilia Wilkinson Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a first-year strategic public relations graduate student with an interest in corporate/investor relations and reputation management.

We recently had the pleasure to meet this year’s recipient, Dale Legaspi, a graduate student at Annenberg, who is now studying to obtain a master’s degree and merge his professional communications experience with a new set of expanded capabilities.

“We are delighted to be able to continue Cecilia’s legacy by helping talented individuals such as Dale, who are pursuing advanced careers in our sector,” said Roger Pondel, the firm’s CEO since 1986, who worked with Cecilia for nearly her entire career. “We are uniquely positioned to mentor these students who are studying a specialization that encompasses traditional and social media, along with Wall Street and financial know-how, as we help tell our clients’ stories to key audiences, both on Main Street and Wall Street.”

Legaspi already has nearly a decade of professional experience, having worked at two boutique agencies and as a freelancer, representing a variety of companies across the technology industry, including mobile and wireless, carrier and enterprise networking, cloud, data center and security.

Wilkinson earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Annenberg, where she later taught undergraduate and graduate classes as an adjunct professor. She was honored with the school’s Distinguished Journalism Alumni award, served on the Board of Governors of the USC General Alumni Association, and was a former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

— George Medici, gmedici@pondel.com