Phil Nardone’s growth plan: make room for other people

Phil Nardone had a problem that does not always make it into a founder’s biography. PAN had reached a revenue plateau. He was working hard, making decisions across the company, keeping himself thoroughly involved. The business remained stuck. Eventually, he concluded that his involvement was part of the difficulty. He had hired leaders, then left too little room for them to lead.

His remedy required a change in his own behavior. Executives would take responsibility for their areas; he would provide direction and trust their judgment. In his telling, PAN moved beyond the plateau. It is an appealingly awkward episode for a communications executive to volunteer. The founder supplies the obstacle as well as the solution. Even a company bearing your initials can benefit from hearing somebody else finish the sentence.

That admission provides a useful way into Philip A. Nardone, Jr.’s career. It connects the person who once accepted a receptionist’s job with the CEO who teaches students, buys agencies and talks about giving people opportunities. His business has changed considerably since 1995. His recurring management question is who gets a chance to grow inside it.

The opening was at reception

Nardone graduated from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School in 1982. When he wanted a start in public relations, an available opening was at the reception desk. He took it. Recalling the decision for Syracuse fraternity members in 2019, he explained that he wanted to excel at the job he actually had. The title could wait. Entry to the profession could not.

He went on to become Hill & Knowlton’s youngest vice president and general manager. The intervening work matters to him: he remembers two mentors at Newsome & Company, which became the firm’s Boston office, as examples of what a good manager could do for a younger colleague. Before PAN, his résumé also included executive roles at fashion house Victor Costa, Neiman Marcus and Rourke & Company. Fashion and agency management would seem to offer ample opportunities to study the human appetite for attention.

In 1995, he founded PAN in Andover, Massachusetts. The ambition included an office where careers could develop without being swallowed by internal politics. That was a specific concern about daily working life, alongside the ordinary business of earning clients’ confidence. The firm moved its headquarters to downtown Boston in 2011. Its founder’s original management preferences would have to survive a much larger operation.

A founder learns to share the decisions

Nardone’s account of the stalled revenue line contains no magical leadership trick. He describes being too deeply involved as the agency expanded, then recognizing that strong executives needed the freedom to make decisions. He organized responsibilities around their expertise and changed his own role toward guidance. The difficult adjustment was allowing capable people to exercise the capability for which they had been hired.

There is a useful distinction between enjoying the idea of talented colleagues and accepting their authority. The second requires a founder to tolerate decisions arriving without his fingerprints. Nardone says that shift helped PAN get past its revenue sticking point. He credits the room it created for other ideas and approaches. The story offers a practical test of his frequently expressed interest in employee development: what happens when an employee develops enough to disagree?

Buying a map, then widening the invitation

The acquisitions give that management lesson a larger setting. PAN bought Vantage PR in 2015 after clients and prospects pressed for a West Coast presence. Employees were also moving west. Nardone later described a geographic problem with consequences for both revenue and retention. A Boston firm could admire Silicon Valley indefinitely; eventually, clients wanted someone available there.

His recollection of the integration is unusually domestic. He compared the acquisition process to courtship, with time spent discovering whether the relationship would work. He also acknowledged surprises after the deal. Building mutual respect with Vantage executive Rob Adler mattered because the combined teams needed leaders who could work together. The office sign could be changed faster than the relationships underneath it.

The purchase of London’s Capella PR followed in 2019. BLASTmedia joined in June 2024, becoming PANBlast, a separate division focused on emerging and high-growth B2B software companies. That deal addressed a different gap. PAN’s broader integrated programs did not fit every earlier-stage prospect. BLASTmedia brought a business built around those needs. Growth here meant having an appropriate answer for a client who might previously have been too small or too narrowly focused.

A year later, Nardone and PANBlast managing director Mendy Werne described keeping the division’s identity while adding operational support. Their reflection reported more than $1 million in annualized referred revenue for PANBlast in 2025. Forecasting, hiring plans and shared planning sessions accompanied the deal. So did authority for the people running the division. The resemblance to Nardone’s own lesson in delegation is fairly plain.

The CEO who keeps a class

Teaching is a sustained part of Nardone’s working life. He has spent more than two decades as an adjunct professor at Syracuse. In his teaching blog, he described the pleasure of meeting a fresh group of students and discovering which questions interested them. His capstone teaching asked graduating PR majors to understand the business around communications and how their work could contribute to an organization.

The PAN Portal made that relationship practical. Developed with Newhouse, it helped students assemble online portfolios of academic and professional work. PAN colleagues visited classes, reviewed portfolios and explained what employers looked for. A student had something concrete to improve before an interview. Agency professionals had a reason to engage with the next generation beyond offering a stirring sentence about potential.

Beginning in 2020, Nardone also guest lectured at historically Black colleges and universities. The program’s partners have included Dillard, North Carolina A&T, North Carolina Central and Morehouse. The purpose is direct: explain agency life, introduce career paths and connect students with professionals at different levels. A field becomes easier to imagine entering when the people doing the work are available for questions.

Travin Duncan encountered the series at North Carolina A&T in 2022 and later joined PAN. He described meeting Black professionals across levels of seniority as an important part of seeing a future in the field. He subsequently shared his experience with another group of participants. That is a satisfying development for a teacher: the former student returns with something useful to tell the class.

Keeping the promise past June

Nardone’s interest in belonging has a personal dimension. He has written publicly about coming out as gay in his forties and worrying about the professional response as well as his family’s reaction. He connects that experience with wanting colleagues to feel comfortable being themselves. These are his own stated reasons for paying attention to who feels at home in an office.

One small detail carries the point. He kept PAN’s Pride logo in his email signature beyond June. A calendar can make a commitment look tidier than it is; the year contains eleven other months. In 2023, the Boston Business Journal recognized him as an LGBT Trailblazer. The gesture in the signature gives the recognition a modest everyday counterpart, visible in the correspondence through which much agency life is conducted.

His public interests extend beyond work. Asked in a 2024 questionnaire what he might do outside communications, he chose acting on Broadway. “Broadway actor – a guy can dream!” was the answer. He also singled out the film Will & Harper, recommended by his son Tre through their family text chain. The CEO discussing data and acquisitions has a family chat and an imagined second career with rather different lighting.

“Don’t lose sight of people.”

Phil Nardone, October 2026

The next tool still needs a judgment call

By October 2026, Nardone was talking about agencies facing closer scrutiny over what clients received for their money. He described preparations for PANda, an in-house AI platform, with employees involved in shaping the tools. The intended benefit was time for strategy, creative work and client counsel. Technology had entered the management conversation; questions about people’s authority and expertise were still sitting at the table.

PAN had already introduced PANoptic analytics in 2014 and PANtelligence a decade later. The company’s 2026 agency profile reported $30.2 million in US gross fees for 2025, up 6.5 percent. Those figures describe a particular year and market, rather than the entirety of Nardone’s career. They nevertheless give some scale to the operation that began in Andover and now has teams on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nardone’s career contains the familiar founder’s ingredients: a start, a company, acquisitions and recognition. Its more interesting moments involve the limits of the founder’s own part. The receptionist needed someone to offer an opening. The student needs someone to explain the profession. The executive needs room to decide. Nardone has occupied each side of that exchange. His account of PAN’s growth suggests that learning to step aside can be a considerable amount of work.