Lisa Lange's career in animal rights activism has come full circle.

Albert Lopez was so busy upon his arrival at Ticketmaster in April, he didn't have time to announce his appointment as VP of strategic communications until more than a month later. His hire, along with that of Wendy Webb as SVP of strategic and financial communications, was part of the company's concerted plan to adopt a more strategic outreach approach.

As British ambassador to the US during the run-up to the Iraq war, Sir Christopher Meyer led an embassy staff of more than 400 that interacted with US lawmakers, the media, and the business community in every imaginable sector.

Diane Gage Lofgren joined Kaiser Permanente's communications team in 2006, a year that saw the healthcare provider in the news quite a bit. Its kidney transplant center in San Francisco was under fire for mismanagement. The company was also under scrutiny for possible patient dumping in LA. The attention was nearly always handled in a reactive way. But Lofgren, no stranger to healthcare PR, sought to add a big-picture perspective.

Geno Effler truly enjoyed the episode of Desperate Housewives in which Susan Mayer (played by Teri Hatcher) crashed her old Volvo XC70 into a lake and survived to replace it with the newer 2008 model. Volvo's VP of public affairs, North America, had sat at the table with the TV producers, the product placement company, and other Volvo execs, and knew it was perfect for the car company's main brand platform: safety.

Poker may not jump to mind as a spectator sport. However, the 39th annual World Series of Poker (WSOP), which began May 30, will draw more eyes than ever if Seth Palansky, director of communications, sports and entertainment, at Harrah's, which owns the event, has his way.

Two weeks into her new job as communications manager at MySpace, Amy Walgenbach helped the company launch a feature intended to solve one of social networking's most discussed problems. The big project, which kicked off earlier this month, was MySpace's highly anticipated Data Availability feature that lets users move their data across the Web.

With the PR industry awash in digital-mania, William Murray, president and COO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), wants everyone to take a step back and assess which tech tools will actually help clients.

When former NBC News international correspondent Charles McLean's phone rang recently, it was a recruitment agency manager asking for advice on hiring a seasoned communications chief for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Pope Benedict XVI'S visit last month marked only the fourth time a sitting pope has made a trip to New York. Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, had to make sense of the hysteria generated by the unique event.