Suzanne Basista, PR and Social Media Director

Good PR practitioners must be four things — a news junkie, an information addict, a stellar strategist and a crafty wordsmith. Suzanne “Suz” Basista embodies each and plenty more.

Suzanne, who joined MarketSpace in early 2011 to launch the agency’s new PR & Social Media department, has nearly eight years of experience strategically maneuvering high-profile brands through the PR and social media frontier and positioning each as industry leaders. In fact, she’s got so much big-brand experience we’re going to name-drop a few of her past clients — Magee-Womens Research Institute, Heritage Valley Health System, Rite Aid, Penn State Smeal College of Business, First Niagra Financial Group and more.

An almighty Penn State grad, Suzanne obtained a degree in PR with minors in spanish and business before catapulting her career at the integrated communications agency, MARC USA. There, Suzanne employed her industry craze, super strategic planning know-how and competitor-killer writing capacity to shimmy her way to the top of the PR chain. Her industry capacity reached opposite ends of the client spectrum, from nonprofit to financial, and her experience encompassed local, regional and national consumer and B2B media relations, internal communications, trade shows, event planning, buzz/guerilla marketing and more. She also leapt ahead of the pack in social media, obtaining proficiency in strategy, planning, monitoring, engaging and reporting years beyond colleagues.

When MarketSpace President & CEO Pam Peters realized it was time for the agency to expand its services, Pam readily appointed Suzanne as the director of the PR & Social Media initiative.

Here, Suzanne fostered the department to grow its employee base and afford clients an assorted range of PR and social media services. Currently Suzanne oversees her employee’s efforts in all facets of the industry for clients in health and wellness, entertainment and manufacturing, as well as undertakes new business development.

What does Suzanne offer clients? The typical outcome is a hearty serving of accomplished objectives in a cost-effective, time-efficient manner. Some of her considerable professional accomplishments include writing multiple award-winning executive speeches, launching a nonprofit’s largest-ever mentoring recruitment program, managing national trade media relations efforts that increased trade ad value fivefold over two years, and directing a far-reaching PR campaign that elevated awareness, secured media coverage and optimally positioned the client against competitors.

When Suzanne is not pitching, writing, managing, strategizing or developing, you can find her in the stands at PSU games, at home watching Good Morning America, concocting wholesome goodness in the kitchen or developing her wine tasting skills. Suzanne also holds the position of “mommy” to new son Connor, who by the way, had his own Twitter hashtag since before birth — #BabyBasista.