Margaret Key, Asia Pacific CEO at Allison Worldwide and executive director at Stagwell, on why she left one of the most successful holding groups in the business, what consolidation is really doing to PR's standing inside holding companies, and why she thinks the next decade will look nothing like the last.

She also talks about Korea's underrated role in the regional comms landscape, the unbundling of senior talent into independent and fractional practices, and what still needs to change for women at the top of the industry.

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Gil Bashe, chair of health and purpose at Finn Partners, argues that healthcare’s most urgent crisis is no longer innovation or access, but institutional credibility. Speaking during a visit to India, Bashe draws on his new book, Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter, to explain how healthcare systems have become optimised for process, compliance, and risk management—often at the expense of patient belief and human connection.

The conversation explores increasing scepticism towards healthcare institutions is, how health influencers are filling a trust vacuum left by institutions, and why misinformation has become a symptom of credibility failure. Bashe also addresses the depth of public anger directed at insurers, the global legitimacy gap between institutions and community voices, and what healthcare communicators must unlearn in a low-trust environment.

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Kelly Bennett, founder and managing director of New Zealand's One Plus One, explains how he has built and grown an independent PR firm through a prolonged economic downturn. He details the operating choices behind that performance, including disciplined growth, leadership depth and a strong emphasis on qualitative factors such as curiosity, judgment and interpersonal capability over narrow functional or quantitative skills.

The conversation also draws on Bennett’s experience inside Omnicom, where he observed multiple cycles of restructuring, consolidation and brand retirements. He discusses how holding-company turbulence affects agency culture and leadership, and what independent founders can learn from watching established network brands expand, contract or disappear altogether.