Christine Barney’s first interview with Bruce Rubin was scheduled for seven o’clock at a New York hotel. She did what a sensible person might do: assumed he meant seven in the evening, wondered what sort of stranger conducted interviews in hotels after dark, and brought her husband along. Rubin, who meant seven in the morning, had checked out hours earlier. They still disagree over who was unreasonable. Barney got another chance.
The misunderstanding is an unusually neat opening for a career built on making meaning clear. Barney was 26, moving to Miami because her husband had taken a job there, and leaving Burson-Marsteller in New York. A boss pointed her toward Bruce Rubin Associates, described as the Miami shop that worked like a New York firm. She set her sights on it, survived the clock dispute and joined in 1989.
She describes herself as an “accidental communications professional.” The first accident was beginning in radio and television in upstate New York and discovering quickly that she did not want the life. A headhunter led her to public relations. There she found a profession that rewarded her particular combination: writing, presentation and strategic thinking. The second accident brought her to Rubin. Everything after that looks more deliberate.
“We made the decision to always compete in a higher weight class.”Christine Barney on rbb’s 2001 restart
Seven people, already planning for seventy
The decisive year was 2001. Barney and her partners bought the agency back from Weber Shandwick and re-established it as an independent firm. They had seven employees. They also created an intranet.
An intranet for seven people has the comic over-preparation of assigned seating at a family dinner. Barney’s logic was serious. The founders wanted the procedures and mentality of a large agency before they had the headcount of one. Systems are awkward to retrofit once growth has turned every improvised habit into precedent. The goal was to keep the freedom of an entrepreneurial firm while borrowing the discipline of a bigger institution.
Four years later, the firm was named Boutique PR Agency of the Year by PRWeek. More awards followed, eventually including six national Agency of the Year wins. In 2023, rbb and Florida Power & Light won PRSA’s Best of Silver Anvil for communications around Hurricane Ian. The trophy case is conspicuous. The operating idea beneath it is quieter: install the useful machinery before the office is crowded enough to demand it.
A workplace with fewer permission slips
Barney calls rbb “employee-driven.” The phrase can sound like agency varnish until she explains what it costs the person in charge. Employees need latitude over how they work. Leaders need enough confidence to let decisions happen without them. Accountability stays; surveillance does not become a substitute for management.
Her more recent formulation is that excellence scales while perfection stalls. Perfection keeps every draft and decision orbiting the founder. Excellence asks for clear standards, sensible systems and judgment distributed through the organization. In March 2026, rbb promoted four longtime partners to senior vice president. Their tenures ranged from more than 15 years to 30. Barney described the group as evidence of a leadership pipeline, which is another way of saying the company has been preparing people to carry weight before the title arrives.
The Barney operating mix
She is not allergic to authority. She is known inside her profession for public speaking and presentation strategy, and describes her strength as telling it like it is in language people understand. She has advised brands including Thomson Reuters and Masterfoods/M&Ms on work ranging from change management and mergers to thought leadership and brand development. Directness is part of the service. “Unvarnished truth and real answers” is the promise attached to her company biography.
Her networking habits reveal the gentler side of the same discipline. Before an event, she studies the attendee list and decides who she hopes to meet. Afterward, she records personal details from conversations, once on a pad or the back of a business card, then in her digital contacts. When someone has just sent a child to college, the fact is not small talk to be discarded. It becomes a reason to ask a better question next time. Her version of networking is preparation followed by memory.
“It’s all about adding value. What are you famous for? How can you stand out?”Her advice to young communications professionals
The mentor appears on the back of a menu
One of Barney’s favorite stories about mentorship arrived at dinner. A waiter brought her a menu with a note written on the back. A former employee had spotted her but did not want to interrupt the family meal. He had once been rbb’s IT director, had found the nerve to build a technology company of his own and had sold it that very day for $3 million. He wanted to thank her for teaching him entrepreneurial skills.
The anecdote contains none of the usual executive furniture. No stage, plaque or ballroom chicken. Just a folded message passed through a waiter. It also offers a better measure of an employee-driven workplace than a slogan does. Someone left, built something and remembered where some of the courage came from.
- Moves from New York to Miami and joins Bruce Rubin Associates.
- Helps buy the agency back and restart rbb as a seven-person independent firm.
- Completes a term chairing the Greater Miami Chamber and receives PRSA Miami’s lifetime achievement award.
- Begins chairing the Miami-Dade Beacon Council under its new two-year structure.
- Joins the inaugural Miami Titan 100 class as rbb expands its internal leadership ranks.
Making Miami legible to the world
The circle around Barney’s agency work gradually widened into civic leadership. She has chaired the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, the South Florida Business Council, PRSA Miami and Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center. She serves with the Orange Bowl Committee and International Women’s Forum and has been recognized repeatedly in Florida Trend’s Florida 500. In late 2025, she became chair of the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, the county’s public-private economic development partnership.
The appointment fits a communications executive with a civic streak. Her task is partly operational and partly narrative: help Miami attract investment and talent, then express the region’s value clearly enough that outsiders can understand it. She has framed the opportunity as turning Miami’s convergence of capital, culture and connection into a story “the world cannot ignore.” For someone who has spent decades positioning companies, the client is now a place.
Barney has argued that what a business stands for matters because employees, customers, vendors and communities all watch the answer. She does not treat values as a consumer-brand luxury. B2B companies, once comfortable outside the spotlight, face the same questions from their people and partners. The job is to decide what matters, then communicate it in a way that matches the organization’s purpose. Authenticity, in her telling, is not a tone of voice. It is agreement between statement and conduct.
The very organized Christmas enthusiast
Away from the boardroom, the systems do not disappear. They become more festive. Barney is devoted to Christmas, belongs to the Hallmark Ornament Club and starts choosing ornaments in July. Her dream alternate career is Hallmark ornament designer. One year, she put up 16 themed trees. She sews, embroiders and crafts, reads roughly two books a week, and once constructed a unicorn Halloween costume persuasive enough to become office lore.
Travel is equally methodical. She did not travel much until she was 40, then began taking several family trips a year. She refuses to check luggage, even for skiing or weeks abroad. The method: two or three colors so everything coordinates, no more than two pairs of shoes, and ship large souvenirs home. Flip-flops, she insists, do not count. This is the sort of loophole that makes a rule livable.
She once called herself a “first-class chicken” when asked to choose among shark diving, bungee jumping and skydiving. She prefers prosecco to wine and sushi to Italian food, despite being half Italian. These small refusals puncture the lacquer that gathers around long-serving executives. Barney’s public persona is candid enough to admit fear, delight and an unreasonable number of Christmas trees.
The useful thread is not perfection. It is readiness. Prepare for the event. Remember the person. Build the intranet early. Pack the carry-on so every piece works with the others. Give capable colleagues enough room to become leaders. Keep what she calls a big windshield and a tiny rear-view mirror: learn from what happened, but do not let it block the view ahead.
Her career began with a missed hour and continued because someone allowed a second conversation. Nearly four decades later, Barney runs the firm that emerged from that chance, chairs an organization charged with Miami’s economic future and still keeps her hands busy making things. The accident found a planner. The planner built for what had not arrived yet.