Inducted 2007
When Robert Hillard teamed up with Alfred Fleishman in 1946 to form a public relations firm, Hillard’s creative background in writing and creativity helped impress the clients whom Fleishman brought into the firm. He’d been a reporter for the St. Louis Star-Times, but the PR business offered the kind of challenges and rewards he’d been seeking. Serving clients like Union Electric and Anheuser-Busch, the small Fleishman-Hillard firm grew quickly, and when Hillard stepped down as CEO in 1974, the company was on its way to becoming the largest PR firm in the U.S. He retired from the business in 1982.
