Reynolds Bergh is the CEO and founder of R Public Relations, a mostly-remote PR firm with offices in Austin and Nashville and employees in every time zone of the continental U.S. She’s also a mother of five, the vice president of the Keene Central School District school board and a born-and-raised Keene girl who returned home permanently three years ago after almost two decades of moving around the country.

Her husband is from the West Coast, she was from the East, and their family was based in Nashville at the time. The odds were 50/50 they’d end up in Keene, Reynolds Bergh said.

“It was literally a coin toss,” she said. “We chose here, and we haven’t looked back since.”

Running a national PR firm from a town of around 1,000 people isn’t as paradoxical as it sounds.

“Oddly enough, my business has grown beyond what I ever could’ve imagined, even though I’m literally in the middle of nowhere,” Reynolds Bergh said. “I get floods of creativity (in Keene), which is why I think a lot of creative people like to be here.”

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Social work to PR

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A 2000 graduate of Lake Placid High School, Reynolds Bergh earned a bachelor’s degree in holistic humanities from Hartwick College in Oneonta and a master’s degree in social work from Syracuse University, completing additional work toward her master’s at Florida Atlantic University. It was during her graduate work, working on foster care legislation in Florida, that she realized the “eye-opening” power her writing had.

“I started working on grant writing and legislative-type things that social workers do,” she said. “I got really into words making change. That was basically the theme — when you write yourself, being an advocate and making change in that way. … I kind of got into marketing without knowing I was doing marketing.”

She began writing website biographies for friends and neighbors on the side, helping them build their brands. Around the same time, she also co-authored a book with friend Laura Finley: “Beyond Burning Bras: Feminist Activism for Everyone.” Deciding her future lay in marketing, she moved to Texas to work in the industry before eventually transitioning to the PR side of things.

“I started working in a PR agency and I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I was like, ‘I’m going to do my own thing,'” Reynolds Bergh said.

Company culture is important to her, she added, and she wanted to create her own. So, in 2016, she launched her own firm, R Public Relations. Seismic growth came during the pandemic, when she was living in Nashville with her family and already managing a remote business.

“R PR took off because, before COVID, we had already put together how to work remotely,” she said. “When 2020 happened, other PR firms, they didn’t know what to do, and so we white-labeled for really big PR firms.”

“White-labeling” is a practice in which a company produces a product or performs a service for another company under that second company’s brand. R PR, with its remote model, was in demand.

“We started to acquire more relationships and grew without even intentionally growing,” Reynolds Bergh said. “The biggest challenge was growing from me being bootstrap-y, scrappy, resourceful and creative personality to, ‘We have an actual full-blown business.'”

Now, R PR has a team of 22 people. When the company opens a job application, it’ll average around 300 applicants. Reynolds Bergh was featured on Forbes’s Powerlist 2023, and the firm has earned a slew of awards, including “Most Reviewed Digital Marketing Company” in Nashville from The Manifest, a business guide, and the LUXlife Magazine Hospitality Award for best five-star lifestyle and hospitality PR agency in the eastern U.S.

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Coming home

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Though her business continues to grow in major cities, Reynolds Bergh’s family is in the Adirondacks to stay.

“My family never wants to move anywhere else. I’ve signed my name in blood to my kids,” she said. “I need to be where my family is and where I feel my kids can grow.”

In the “cool creative space” of the High Peaks, Reynolds Bergh said that she can begin a “bridge phase” where she does more local work. R PR has worked with local clients like The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid and Small Town Cultures in Plattsburgh, formerly of Keene.

“It feels comfortable and familiar, but I definitely think it feels like an untapped resource still,” she said. “There’s still opportunity and a bit of a blank canvas for what I do.”

One of the biggest attractions in the area for her family was the quality and size of local public schools, Reynolds Bergh said. She attended Keene Central School until third grade and then completed the remainder of her education in the Lake Placid Central School District.

“Not just Keene, but any school in the Adirondacks is so special. Classmates are like family because their class sizes are so small,” she said. “(My kids) love the sports and activities. Keene has ‘forest Fridays’ at the school, and so they love that, skiing in the mountains.”

The slower pace of Keene is great for her introverted family members, Reynolds Bergh said. Moving back to her hometown as an adult has also changed her perspective on the scenery and the tourism industry that keeps the area afloat.

“Driving to the grocery store, you’re in a postcard. A literal postcard. I didn’t realize that when I grew up here. … It feels like you’re on vacation (all the time),” she said. “I remember being like, ‘That’s annoying to me. I don’t want to live where people vacation.’ And now, as an adult, I’m like, ‘That’s the best thing ever.’ … I love that people love our area.”