Bellmont Partners promotes Megan Derkey to new role with focus on AI

We’re excit­ed to announce that long­time Bell­mont Part­ners team mem­ber Megan Derkey has been pro­mot­ed to a new­ly cre­at­ed role at the agency: Senior Direc­tor, Tech­nol­o­gy & Man­u­fac­tur­ing. Megan will con­tin­ue to lead our Tech­nol­o­gy & Man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tice group, strate­giz­ing and imple­ment­ing pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns for inno­v­a­tive clients in the tech and man­u­fac­tur­ing spaces. Addi­tion­al­ly, she will lead our orga­ni­za­tion-wide focus on AI and tech­nol­o­gy to ben­e­fit all of Bell­mont Part­ners’ clients, team mem­bers and processes.

We recent­ly chat­ted with Megan about her new role, how AI search is impact­ing PR strate­gies and more:

Q: Your new role includes a focus on AI and tech­nol­o­gy. How does this focus help ele­vate the entire agency and its guid­ance for clients? 

A: The shift to so many AI-pow­ered tools in our work­place right now is dra­mat­ic and fast-chang­ing. I’m excit­ed to help our team stay up to date and learn about new ways to bet­ter sup­port our clients. Much of this work is already hap­pen­ing through our agency’s AI task force, which I’ve been a mem­ber of since 2023 and began lead­ing in 2025. Our AI task force dri­ves inter­nal agency edu­ca­tion and devel­ops resources for our clients. Bell­mont Part­ners is tak­ing an edu­ca­tion­al approach to inte­grat­ing AI into our agency, and we want every team mem­ber to be knowl­edge­able about it and to have a new AI lens on every­thing they work on.

From keep­ing up with the lat­est rec­om­men­da­tions for GEO and SEO best prac­tices to ensur­ing we’re using the best avail­able tools, there’s a lot to take on with all the AI news and changes. I’m look­ing for­ward to help­ing ele­vate the agency in this role, but I’m also learn­ing from many oth­ers here. We have sev­er­al clients adding AI func­tion­al­i­ty to some very cool appli­ca­tions across a vari­ety of indus­tries, and I’m excit­ed to con­tin­ue learn­ing from them and from oth­ers in our indus­try who are exper­i­ment­ing with AI and oth­er next-gen technologies.

Q: It’s no secret that AI is reshap­ing how peo­ple search for and con­sume infor­ma­tion. What does this shift mean for PR strategies?

A: The com­plete dis­rup­tion of AI is entire­ly shift­ing con­sumer behav­ior across the board, which makes media rela­tions and strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions more impor­tant than ever. With more peo­ple incor­po­rat­ing AI search and AI tools into their day-to-day lives – from home to work and every­where in between – it’s impor­tant for brands to craft con­tent for key audi­ences and AI find­abil­i­ty alike.

Earned media is becom­ing a crit­i­cal dri­ver of AI-pow­ered search vis­i­bil­i­ty. We have seen study after study this year point to the impor­tance of earned media dri­ving AI results. As AI con­tin­ues to evolve and change the media and search land­scapes, lean­ing into strong, con­sis­tent earned media strate­gies so that AI mod­els have cred­i­ble, cur­rent sources to draw from is a major oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. Pub­lic rela­tions is more cen­tral than ever in how brands show up in the new AI era.

Q: There is a lot of gray area in AI usage with­in orga­ni­za­tions right now. Where does Bell­mont Part­ners fall on the spec­trum of AI usage in communications?

A: Bell­mont Part­ners is active­ly embrac­ing AI as part of our day-to-day work, with thought­ful guardrails in place to ensure qual­i­ty, accu­ra­cy and client pro­tec­tion. It’s sur­pris­ing how many com­pa­nies haven’t giv­en their employ­ees any guid­ance on AI use. That’s open­ing the orga­ni­za­tion and its employ­ees to so many risks. But since much of our work at Bell­mont Part­ners is con­tent sent direct­ly to media pub­li­ca­tions, many of which have edi­to­r­i­al stan­dards pro­hibit­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, we’ve tak­en a strong stance that any con­tent sent to media must be human-gen­er­at­ed, not AI-gen­er­at­ed. We also have an inter­nal AI pol­i­cy that pro­hibits the use of con­fi­den­tial or pro­pri­etary client data in pub­lic mod­els and pro­vide Copi­lot as our agency’s tool of choice due to its secu­ri­ty inte­gra­tion with our agency’s oth­er tech­nol­o­gy systems.

While many orga­ni­za­tions are focus­ing on AI as a pro­duc­tion tool, Bell­mont Part­ners focus­es on how AI reshapes dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty and influ­ence. We’re think­ing about AI holis­ti­cal­ly as one part of our strategy.

Q: How does Bell­mont Part­ners help brands nav­i­gate and lever­age AI in their PR efforts? 

A: We are sup­port­ing clients across a wide spec­trum of AI knowl­edge and adop­tion, so we’ve done every­thing from facil­i­tat­ing con­ver­sa­tions about AI guid­ance and gov­er­nance to edu­cat­ing teams on how earned media cov­er­age can help sup­port brands’ like­li­hood of appear­ing in AI search results. We’re also help­ing more clients exper­i­ment with new for­mats and ways of shar­ing their con­tent. It’s weird to say, but we’re now writ­ing for both humans and machines, and they both have dif­fer­ent needs and expectations.

A lot of how we already sup­port our clients in their PR efforts still holds up very well in this new AI world. Strong, repeat­ed mes­sag­ing sig­nals cred­i­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty to LLMs. Third-par­ty val­i­da­tion from trust­ed media sources sig­nals impor­tance to the mod­els. And ele­vat­ing thought lead­er­ship and exper­tise across many touch­points helps AI tools sur­face a brand’s insights. If you have a strong PR strat­e­gy, you like­ly already have a strong AI strat­e­gy as well! And if you’re in need of a strat­e­gy, our team can absolute­ly help you with that. Brands that invest in con­sis­tent, authen­tic and cred­i­ble sto­ry­telling today will be well-posi­tioned to suc­ceed as AI con­tin­ues to evolve.

As the land­scape evolves and tools get smarter, I think there will be even more oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to help our clients keep tabs on their brands and AI insights in new ways. If you want to chat more and geek out over the oppor­tu­ni­ties there, I’m always excit­ed to talk about new tools and ideas and how the indus­try is evolving.

Q: Just for fun, what’s your favorite way to use AI out­side of work?

A: There are so many great ways to use AI out­side of work! I love using Google Gem­i­ni to gen­er­ate inspo images for home ren­o­va­tion projects, to help visu­al­ize dif­fer­ent ways we could update spaces. You just have to be care­ful or give the plat­form you’re using some clear guid­ance – oth­er­wise you may wind up with fur­ni­ture extend­ing through walls, or a piano stick­ing out a window!

Jokes aside, it’s also been super help­ful in plan­ning our fam­i­ly’s sum­mer trav­el! Since long before Bell­mont Part­ners start­ed sup­port­ing the Min­neso­ta State Parks and Trails divi­sion, we’ve been on a mis­sion to vis­it all of Minnesota’s beau­ti­ful state parks, and we’re over halfway there. We’re start­ing to get more strate­gic about which ones to vis­it next, and which parks will require a lit­tle more trav­el and care­ful plan­ning (Gar­den Island, any­one?!). Chat­G­PT has helped me iden­ti­fy which parks I could com­bine into var­i­ous trips, sites to see along the way, the best time of year for vis­it­ing and much more.

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Thanks to Megan for shar­ing these insights, and please join us in con­grat­u­lat­ing her on the well-deserved pro­mo­tion. If you’re inter­est­ed in more PR and AI insights from Bell­mont Part­ners, here are some blog posts that go into greater detail about our AI approach to mes­sag­ing, owned and earned media and thought lead­er­ship.