I jumped off a plane from Chapel Hill just about two weeks ago and as I’m sitting in my NYC apartment, a certain conversation has been on my mind.  

The Institute of Public Relations (IPR) Bridge Conference at UNC did not disappoint. Two full days on a gorgeous campus, surrounded by some of the sharpest minds in public relations, people who are genuinely wrestling with the hard questions about where this industry is headed. AI dominated the conversation, as expected, and was deemed the “unofficial theme.” But what surprised (and relieved) me was how many of the discussions kept circling back to fundamentals: measurement, reputation, credibility, and the irreplaceable value of human judgment, supported by measurement frameworks that prove PR’s value in an increasingly automated world.

I was there presenting original research with my colleague Angela Dwyer on how earned media performs in an AI-driven landscape; what gets picked up, what gets surfaced, and what gets ignored entirely. It was one of those experiences that reminds you why you do this work. The room was engaged. The questions were good. People are paying attention.

But the conversation that has stuck with me most since I got home wasn’t about AI at all. It was a sidebar that emerged organically, the kind that tends to be the most honest, about remote work, office culture, and the very different ways that different generations are experiencing both.

The Conversation Nobody Planned to Have

It came up the way a lot of the best conference moments do: not on a slide, not in a prepared talk, but in the in-between moments. Someone made a comment, someone else pushed back, and suddenly a room full of communicators had a lot of feelings about where we work and what we’re losing (or gaining) in the process.

The generational divide was front and center. On one side: professionals who built their careers in offices, who believe deeply in the mentorship that happens in hallways, the culture that gets built over lunch, the visibility that comes from just being in the room. On the other side: a generation that came of age professionally during a pandemic, that learned to collaborate over Slack and Zoom, that has built real, meaningful careers from spare bedrooms and kitchen tables.

Being an IPR NEXT member, defined as professionals with less than 10 years in the industry, I’m firmly in that second camp… and I have some thoughts.

I Grew Up Remote, and I’m Not Sorry

I want to be clear: I am not anti-office. But I am pro-honesty about what remote work actually looks like when it’s done well because I think it gets flattened into a lazy debate that doesn’t reflect reality.

My professional life started in internships conducted entirely over video call. My first full-time role was remote. And now, at Fullintel, I work remotely in a role that spans client management, original research, thought leadership, and executive support. None of which has suffered because I’m not sitting in a physical office. I recently moved from Boston to New York without skipping a beat, without a disruption to my work or my clients. That flexibility is not nothing. That is a real, material quality of life advantage that I think older generations sometimes underestimate because they didn’t have it.

But here’s where I’ll surprise you: I also crave the in-person moments more than almost anything else about this job.

The In-Person Moments Hit Differently Now

When I do get to meet a client face-to-face, or sit in a room with my team, it feels meaningful in a way it probably wouldn’t if it were routine. The rarity creates presence. You’re not half-listening on a call while your email is open, you’re actually there, reading the room, catching the things that don’t make it into a follow-up email.

I noticed this at IPR Bridge, too. The conversations that happened over coffee, in the hallway between sessions, at lunch,  those were the ones that moved the needle. They were unscheduled, unrecorded, and irreplaceable. That’s the piece of the in-person experience that I think remote-first workers, myself included, have to be honest about missing.

But, and this is important, I don’t think the solution is forcing everyone back into an office five days a week. I think the solution is being intentional. Prioritizing the moments that genuinely benefit from physical presence and protecting the flexibility that makes the day-to-day sustainable.

What This Means for Our Industry Specifically

Public relations is a relationship business. Always has been, always will be. And relationships, at their best, require real human contact. The clients who trust us most are usually the ones we’ve broken bread with, sat across from in a tough conversation, or celebrated alongside at an in-person event.

One of the things I kept hearing at IPR Bridge was that executives want a point of view. Not just data, but a recommendation, a posture, a human perspective. That’s not something AI will replace. And it’s not something that happens purely over a screen, either. It happens when you’ve built enough trust with someone that they lean over and ask you what you really think.

Remote work can coexist with that kind of relationship-building. But it requires effort. It requires flying to North Carolina for a conference, or having your boss chauffeur you on a road trip across the state to meet all your clients in the area (thanks Angela!). It requires making the trip to meet a client when you could have just sent a slide deck. It requires showing up.

My Honest Take

I don’t think this is a generational war. I think it’s a calibration challenge. Younger professionals aren’t lazy or disconnected, we’re just the first generation to prove that work doesn’t have to happen in a specific building to get done. And more experienced professionals aren’t wrong that something is lost when a new hire never bumps into a senior colleague in the kitchen and gets 10 minutes of inadvertent mentorship.

Both of those things are true. And the best workplaces I’ve seen, and the best conference rooms I’ve sat in, are the ones where people are willing to hold both truths at once.

I returned from IPR Bridge to my inbox, my clients, and my very comfortable home office with a renewed appreciation for the flexibility that lets me do this job well, and the in-person moments that remind me why I love doing it at all. I am also now more convinced than ever that the human element in our work, in our media, in our offices (and out of them) is the thing worth fighting for. 

Some things are worth the trip. An IPR event is always one of them!