Philip Lesly was born in Chicago, Illinois, the city in which he was to achieve prominence as a public-relations counsel, on May 29, 1918. After working as a news editor at the Chicago Herald and Examiner from 1935 to 1937, he graduated from Northwestern University in 1940. In the same year he began his professional career as a copywriter in the advertising department of Sears, Roebuck & Company. He worked for his alma mater as assistant director of publicity during 1941 and later headed the public-relations department of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. During the 1940s Lesly also held executive positions with two Chicago advertising agencies: account executive with Theodore R. Sills & Company (1942) and executive vice-president of Harry Coleman & Company (1947-1949). Lesly left Coleman in 1949 to found his own firm, the Philip Lesly Company. Eventually this firm grew to become one of the nation's most important public-relations agencies, with offices in Chicago and Toronto. Among its clients were the American Medical Association, First National Bank of Chicago, State Farm Insurance, 3M Company, and U.S. Steel. In 1968 Lesly disbanded this firm to turn to independent counseling.
A popular public speaker and a widely-published author, Lesly has written Public Relations: Principles and Procedures (1945, with Theodore R. Sills), Public Relations in Action (1947), Public Relations Handbook (1950), Everything and the Kitchen Sink (1955), and The People Factor: Managing the Human Climate (1974). His handbook, which has gone through many editions, is one of the classics in the field. Philip Lesly is a charter member of the Public Relations Society of America and a member of the International Public Relations Association.
Philip Lesly died in 1997.
