Steve Drake

Steve has responded to dozens of RFPs over the course of his 25+ career and led numerous PR agency searches as both a corporate communications executive and an independent consultant. Before launching RFP Associates, he ran his own corporate communications consultancy, Steven Drake Associates, LLC, where Steve offered services designed to help clients effectively communicate with audiences and achieve their organizational objectives.  During the course of that work, he found that many of his clients would seek his help in identifying, evaluating and hiring PR agencies both for short-term assignments as well as ongoing retainer work.  That PR agency search experience included both domestic and international assignments in the education, publishing, technology and healthcare fields – and helped spawn the decision to launch RFP Associates. Continued

Robert Udowitz

Over the course of his 25-year career, Robert has seen both sides of the request for proposal process while working at public relations/public affairs offices, corporations, and trade associations. Prior to creating RFP Associates, he was a PR/PA consultant based in Washington, DC, where his clients centered in the financial industry but included commercial real estate companies, trade associations and a magainze publisher. Before launching his consultancy, Robert was the director of communications for a satellite industry trade association and the corporate public relations manager for the government technology firm American Management Systems.

He has been a member of the Board of the Public Relations Society of America's National Capital Chapter for the past six years and on the Board of the Independent Public Relations Alliance for more than five. Continued

Helen Sullivan, APR, Fellow PRSA 

Helen is president of the Washington, D.C. metro area-based public relations firm InHouse Communications, LLC. She has more than 30 years’ experience in PR, advertising and marketing, specializing in industry-wide programs for associations. Her programs have been the recipients of numerous awards including three PRSA Silvers, five PRSA-NCC Thoth Awards, including a Best in Show, and two ASAE Gold Circle Awards, among others. 

She has written about the RFP process for several trade publications, lectured on the topic and managed the agency search process. Helen is director of the Accessible Parking Coalition, an organization she helped establish for the International Parking & Mobility Institute and is Communications Counsel for the not-for-profit CertiPUR-US® foam certification program. She graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, New York and has taught graduate-level PR at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.  Helen has served as a board member of the Independent Public Relations Alliance and is a founding board member of the American Writers Museum in Chicago.