Biography

An award-winning PR and business strategist, Cheryl Procter-Rogers is currently executive coach and associate director for Ernst & Young’s Americas Coaching Practice. She provides individual coaching and thought leadership in areas such as leadership and career transitions, leadership growth, and transformational leadership.

For more than 40 years, Cheryl has worked with an impressive portfolio of executives and Fortune 100 companies. In 1986, she established her firm, A Step Ahead Public Relations (later A Step Ahead Consulting and Coaching). On three occasions, she suspended her practice to accept corporate positions to create, overhaul or enhance public relations departments. She served in executive roles for DePaul University, Home Box Office (HBO), Nielsen Marketing Research and Golden State Mutual. 

While at DePaul University, she served as the Vice President of Public Relations and Communications and served as the university president’s personal advisor on all matters related to the university’s reputation and culture change. She was an advisor on his five-member cabinet.  She re-engineered the media relations unit, formed a New Media unit, and commissioned a video studio.

HBO - After more than one year as a consultant, Cheryl was hired as the Regional Corporate Communications Director for Home Box Office. For nearly nine years, she developed and implemented marketing communications strategies across 11 states in the Midwest and four in the West. She led the region’s crisis communications strategies, community relations, managed partnerships, speech writing and talent relations activities. She worked closely with business and community leaders, national and local media, senior executives within HBO and other Time Warner subsidiaries.

She planned and implemented high profile special events for HBO with attendees ranging to more than 25,000. This included world premiere screening events with international talent such as John Cusick, Halle Berry, Steven Schirripa, George Foreman, Terrence Howard, and others. 

Cheryl led Nielsen Marketing Research’s culture and change efforts when she was recruited to suspend her consulting practice and form a new public relations department. After conducting a comprehensive diagnosis and evaluation of the strategic needs of the company, she collaborated with and advised the company’s presidents, chairman and executives. She also worked with executives of the parent company, Dun & Bradstreet, to establish corporate strategies and policies for national and global communications efforts. 

She managed a $2.2-million budget that grew over time. In less than a year, advertising was added to her role. She led all crisis communication strategies, developed communications tools for senior management and the sales force, coordinated product announcements working with national and international trade press and served as a liaison between Dun & Bradstreet and Wall Street financial analysts. Procter-Rogers established Nielsen columns and regular features in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, USA Today, Brand Week, and other outlets. She was appointed to the Dun & Bradstreet Global Communications Council to assist other Dun & Bradstreet companies implement the media relations strategies she developed. Cheryl was awarded the Dun & Bradstreet Customer Focus award.

As a consultant, she has worked with Coca-Cola, Nissan, Allstate, McDonald’s, McCain Foods, IBM, the former Valparaiso Law School, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, and Magellan Corporation, to name a few. She developed, implemented strategies and counseled clients in the areas of crisis and executive communications, strategic planning, change management, leadership effectiveness and business strategy. She conducts media training and facilitates board retreats. She provides professional development leadership workshops on a variety of topics such as transformational leadership, effective communications, scenario planning, crafting an elevator speech, executive presence and becoming a trusted advisor.

Cheryl has been an executive coach to more than 1200 C-Suite executives over twenty-five years. Through her coaching approach, executives focus on their challenges through action plans co-created to benefit themselves and their organizations. Executives focus on their leadership development, corporate presence, personal branding, effective communications, work-life balance, career transitions and time management challenges. 

She has coached leaders at Magellan Corp., Academy of General Dentistry, GroupOn, HSBC, Amazon, US Postal Service, PCORI, Special Olympics, the former Valparaiso University Law School, Allianz, Comcast, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, and others. She was recently selected as one of the top 20 Best Executive Coaches in Chicago and is one of over 1,300 in the world who holds an International Coaching Federation Master Certified Coach (MCC) credential. 

She was the 2006 National President and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the industry’s largest professional organization with more than 30,000 members at that time. She was the youngest member of PRSA in Los Angeles to earn accredited professional status and  was also the first African American woman to earn that honor. 

In 2000, she was the youngest member ever to be inducted into PRSA’s College of Fellows, a distinction held by a little more than 350 individuals in the field of public relations. She is the 2011 PRSA Gold Anvil recipient, the Society’s highest individual award. First awarded in 1948, the Gold Anvil is considered PRSA's lifetime achievement award and is presented to an individual whose work significantly advanced the profession and set high standards for those engaged in the practice of public relations.

Cheryl has authored more than 100 articles, contributed to a dozen public relations and coaching books, and is frequently interviewed and quoted in the media.  She is  featured in the book, Diverse Voices: Profiles in Leadership. She contributed to PR textbooks Managing Public Relations: Methods and Tools by Peter Smudde; No Mulligans Allowed: Strategically Plotting Your Public Relations Course; and Public Relations: The Profession and the Practice. She contributed an essay to the book Souls of My Sisters, published by Kensington Publishing. Early in her career, she was featured in Black Enterprise Magazine’s “14 Boom Careers” (Feb 1994) and a “Rising Star” by Inside P.R. in 1993.

Cheryl has served as president, chair and member of the board of directors for more than 15 national and global nonprofit organizations. She currently serves on the editorial board of Choice, a magazine for professional coaches and is an at-large director on the International Coaching Federation’s Global Enterprise Board.

She earned her bachelor's degree from Bradley University, an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management, and a master’s degree in Leadership and Change Management from DePaul University. She is PROSCI certified in change management.

She is married to Michigan State Police’s highly decorated retired detective lieutenant Terry D. Rogers, who is currently Inspector, DePaul University. She is an avid golfer, loves to travel and deep-sea fish.