William Howard Chase was born January 30, 1910, in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from Sioux City High School, in Sioux City, Iowa, in January 1927. As a student at the State University of Iowa, Chase graduated cum laude in English on June 6, 1932. At Iowa he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the Sanxay Prize, which allowed him to complete postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics in 1933. As related in a paper by one of his colleagues, the closing of American banks in March 1933 left Chase stranded in London and he therefore sought a circuitous route back to the United States via bicycle, camel and Japanese freighter. At Iowa, Chase was a member of the Delta Beta chapter of Alpha Tau Omega, a leadership development fraternity. He went on to become a leader in public relations and served as assistant secretary of commerce in the administration of President Harry S. Truman, 1950-1951. Chase’s wide experience includes lecturer on international relations at Harvard University, 1935-1936. From 1936 until January 1939, he served concurrently as guest lecturer on international relations at Drake University and associate editor at the Des Moines Register & Tribune. At the American Retail Federation, Chase served as assistant to the president, conducting public relations programs from 1939 through December 1940, when he became associate editor of the newsletter Whaley-Eaton American Letter in Washington, D. C. His next position was director of public services with General Mills in Minneapolis in December 1941. On June 1, 1945 he joined General Foods as director of public relations in New York City, which continued for seven years. Also in 1945, he was advisor to the State Department on the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. According to a December 30, 2001 article in The Advocate, “Howard Chase served as an OSS officer during World War II and wrote the code alerting Winston Churchill that President Roosevelt had released 50 ships, marking the beginning of the Lend Lease Program which allowed the U. S. to provide Britain with defense supplies during the war. After the war, Chase joined the CIA as a covert agent in Europe.” General Foods granted Chase a seven-month leave of absence in September 1950 to serve as adviser to Charles Sawyer, Secretary of Commerce, and as assistant to William Harrison, administrator of the National Production Authority, and then he was appointed director of Information Policy under Charles E. Wilson, director of the Office of Defense Mobilization for President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. He was granted a second leave in 1952 to serve on General Eisenhower’s organizational staff for returning stateside and for organizing special events and conventions. In March 1952, he was appointed consultant to the Citizens for Eisenhower Campaign in New York. During 1946-1947, Chase served as the first Chairman of the joint Committee for Better Understanding of Our Economic System, through the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA). At this time he was also a founding member of the public relations advisory committee of the Grocery Manufacturers of America trade association. In fall 1952 Chase became a partner in the Selvage & Lee Public Relations firm, where he remained for a very successful two-and-one-half years. As of February 1, 1955, Chase was Vice President at McCann-Erickson and was in charge of the Institute of Communications Research. There he conducted opinion research and served as consultant. In June 1954, Chase founded and was named president of Communications Counselors, Inc., a public relations affiliate of McCann-Erickson, Inc. He served in this capacity until April 1959, when he established Howard Chase Associates, a consulting firm in communications and public policy. Chase served as president of Howard Chase Associates from that date until December 1969. In 1961, Howard Chase International, a subsidiary of Howard Chase Associates, was incorporated in Zurich, Switzerland. The following services were incorporated under the umbrella of Howard Chase Associates: Research Strategies Corporation; Communications Analysis, Inc.; Council for Management of Change, Inc.; Occasions Unlimited. In October 1961 Chase was appointed to serve on the National Advisory Dental Research Council, a body that advises the Surgeon General on research grants and fellowships awarded to universities by the National Institute of Dental Research, one of seven institutes that make up the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He was on the National Advisory Health Services Council, 1965-1969. Chase was a founding member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), serving as vice president in 1951 and president in 1956. One PRSA committee on which he served during 1962 to 1966 was the USIA Liaison Committee, working closely with the U. S. Information Agency, within the U. S. Department of State, which was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 to further foreign public diplomacy. Howard Chase presented to the numerous organizations he was in contact with for more than fifty years. In June 1957, Chase presented the commencement address to SUI graduates, speaking on world trade with his speech, “The Brink of Peace.” In June 1992, sixty years after his graduation from the University of Iowa, the UI Alumni Association named Chase to serve on their board of directors, representing the College of Liberal Arts. In connection with other universities, in 1968 Chase was awarded the honorary doctoral degree in economics by Dongguk University, in Seoul, Korea. Chase was vice president of public affairs and assistant to William F. May, the chairman and president of American Can Company, from December 1969 to February 1975. He served as acting vice president of the American paper Institute in April 1975. Chase was president of Howard Chase Enterprises, Inc. since 1974. He taught as adjunct faculty at the University of Connecticut at Stamford in fall 1974 and two years later was promoted to lecturer and director of the Institute of Public Issue Management, serving through 1980. Howard Chase Enterprises worked with such associations as the Ford Foundation and such government agencies as the National Institutes of Health, as well as corporations such as Chrysler, Dow Chemical and Xerox. Chase was a prolific writer of articles and authored the book, By Any Other Name, Issue Management: Origins of the Future (1984), which has an influence today. The Issue Management Council website at issuemanagement.org states, “The W. Howard Chase Award was created by the Issue Management Council to recognize organizational excellence in issue management. Presented for the first time in 1988, the award represents the highest distinction in the field. It is named after Howard Chase, who coined the term ‘issue management’ in 1976 and founded the field’s early disciplines.” Examples of recipients of the award are Dow Chemical Company, Pacific Bell Telephone Company and Equifax. The study of “issues management” has been described as identifying and evaluating social and political events which may impact a company’s ability to remain productive. The goal is to influence policy in areas such as public affairs, communications and government relations that are dynamic and awash in change. The crux of the subject, as well as which people are involved and the economic environment, continually mutate while the company stewards work to maintain company goals. Chase married Elizabeth (“Betty”) Coykendall October 25, 1935. The couple had three children, Anne, Alison and Thomas. Betty died in January 1992 and William Howard Chase died August 19, 2003, both in Stamford, Connecticut.