Does age impact your career in PR?

Not only is ageism in PR in danger of creating a skills gap just as communications are becoming more complicated – new research suggests it’s kicking in even earlier than expected and ‘experience’ itself is at risk of becoming obsolete.

“The industry has changed dramatically since I started – from traditional media relations and PR to digital, social media, influencers and now AI,” says Sara Stewart, who has worked in PR and comms for more than 30 years, and is now a senior consultant for major global brands.

“But what I have noticed is that the older you become, the more you can find yourself having to prove that you’re still relevant rather than people simply recognising that you have accumulated another layer of expertise.”

This is exactly what research from Women in PR UK revealed when it explored that tension through three listening labs speaking to women and men across the industry this year.

“PR has a complicated relationship with experience. We value it in principle, but at a certain point it can start to be read very differently,” says Ella Darlington, committee member of Women in PR UK, and tech Marcomms consultant, ED Marcomms.

“We partnered with Break The Silence Collective (BTSC) and Anita Iwogu on a series of three ageism-focused listening labs over the summer, involving around 35 participants in total (these included male and female in-house, agency, independent comms practitioners, recruiters, coaches and hiring professionals).

“This builds on Women in PR’s 2025 research which found that the age at which people reported experiencing ageism in PR had fallen from 45 to 40 in two years.

“This year’s conversations suggest those pressures may be appearing earlier still, but in 2026, it’s less about a single age threshold and more about when experience starts being read as cost, a risk of obsolescence rather than value.”

And of course, the age-old gender bias is hard to ignore in the findings, as Darlington says: “Women account for around 60% of PR practitioners, yet just 46% at director level.”

She explains, “Age doesn’t operate in isolation – for older women, it can compound barriers already present. One person spoke about “waiting for that sweet spot where they were no longer being underestimated for being junior before becoming obsolete, but after two decades, they went from one to the other!’

“And one comment from last year’s panel also stayed with me. A senior Black woman in the industry said there were already barriers to getting into the room because of her race and gender, before age even became part of the equation.”

Stewart says that the problem is that every time a new channel, such as TikTok, comes along, there is a temptation in the industry to think that the people who understand the channel best must be the best communicators

“But I don’t think that’s true,” she counters. “The older you get in this industry, the more valuable the experience can become because your role should increasingly be about judgement rather than tactics. I need to know the latest TikTok trend. I need to know whether my client should be on TikTok in the first place.”

And she warns, “The danger for PR is that we end up creating a skills gap at exactly the point where communications is becoming more complicated. A younger practitioner may be brilliant at creating a Reel but put that person in front of a CEO whose company has just made 200 people redundant, you need a different kind of experience.”

From a senior brand perspective, Thery Jean Christophe, founder and CEO, MusaArtGallery, agrees that ageism in PR often appears through assumptions about digital competence.

He says, “Older professionals may be considered less adaptable, while younger candidates are automatically assumed to understand every new platform. However digital tools can be learned but judgement, relationships and the ability to manage a brand through a difficult moment take years to develop.”

And he also makes the point, “PR firms that equate youth with digital competence risk losing valuable experience.”

Christophe thinks that perhaps industry skews younger because of its “fast pace, long hours and junior-heavy agency structures”.

Stewart adds: “PR has always had a reputation for being an industry where you work long hours, making it easier for younger people without responsibilities. The industry has often rewarded presenteeism and energy over experience.

“But as you become more senior, you become more efficient. Now I can look at a communications problem and see in an hour what might have taken me a week to work out 20 years ago. Experience should make you faster, not slower.”

This side of the industry created problems for Sycamore founder, Hannah Viney, who started her own agency eight years ago after suffering burn out. She says the experience has made her value working smarter, not harder.

“I’m bucking the trend in terms of employing people who are older than me because of my personal experience of being pushed to burnout,” she explains. “I need older account managers with long careers, lived experiences and maybe even crisis comms knowledge. That kind of sage, accrual of knowledge and expertise will do a better job for clients. Not just how quickly can you identify a trending piece of audio to put on your latest video.”

But it does mean as an agency owner she has also found that ageism affects the types of clients she attracts. “I am a traditional PR and the work that we do focuses on earned media, but there’s definitely a shift with clients wanting to lean more towards influencer marketing and solely focusing on online PR only in their strategy.”

The bias against older practitioners or agencies is often subtle. “It can be assumptions about whether someone will understand digital,” says Stewart, “whether they’ll fit into a younger team. Be sufficiently energetic. Whether they’ll be ‘current’.”

The Women In PR research also discovered this outdated language. “This suggests age can add another pressure point to that existing progression gap, particularly around who is still perceived as current, ambitious or leadership material,” says Darlington.

When the full findings from the BTSC listening labs go live at the end of October, she says employers will be asked to challenge age-coded language in hiring and progression conversations. “If someone is described as ‘too senior’, ‘not dynamic enough’ or not the right ‘cultural fit’, ask what that actually means and what evidence sits behind it.”

Stewart is cautiously optimistic in this fast-changing world. She says, “I think older practitioners can offer something increasingly important in the age of AI: the ability to distinguish between information and insight.

“AI cannot replace decades of judgement. And the more technology changes the industry, the more valuable that human judgement becomes.”

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