Five Questions with Eddie Staltari

Eddie Staltari is a PR and media strategist who helps women leaders harness the news media for positive impact. Over 15 years, she has led campaigns that shaped public attitudes, behaviours, programs, and policy, including as the Strategic PR Director of an award-winning positive change agency. Eddie trains, coaches, and consults women leaders, founders, experts, advocates, activists and politicians to attract media attention to their work and mission across the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the United Kingdom.

Q1. What do you find most rewarding about your work?

Working with incredible women who are changing the world, and watching doors open when they get media attention on the problems they’re addressing, the insights they have to share, and the solutions they’re pushing for. With sustained momentum, they make issues impossible to ignore and command attention from the public and decision-makers. 

Helping women step confidently into the media spotlight and advocate for their work and mission is the best part of what I do.

Q2. What moment or achievement are you most proud of?

Creating a program to challenge who we see and hear in the news. Women are severely underrepresented in news reporting, making up just one in four sources and subjects of global news coverage (GMMP, 2025). 

PR agencies gatekeep the knowledge that could change this statistic because doing so would affect their bottom line. Get Media-Ready for Good pulls back the curtain, teaching women CEOs, founders, leaders, experts, politicians and advocates exactly how to secure news coverage, drive action, and overcome gendered barriers keeping us out of the media spotlight. 

Q3. What’s the best advice you’ve received?

Too many incredible women believe media attention is a reward for good work or expertise. In reality, many of the people featured in the news are there because they understand how news gets made and have requested to contribute as news sources. 74% of news sources and subjects are men. To help level the playing field, women need to get comfortable asking for media attention and be ready with everything journalists need to say ‘yes’, rather than waiting for a call to contribute that may never come.

Q4. What’s something you wish you knew when you were starting out in media?

You can’t drive meaningful positive change if you’re leaving people confused or unsupported in your wake while chasing fast media deadlines. Nothing matters more than the wellbeing of the people and communities we’re working to support, especially the brave advocates willing to share their lived experiences as media case studies.

In fast-paced PR agencies where daily coverage is the expectation, the relentless news cycle can make it feel impossible to properly prepare, brief, and care for people, but there are so many ways to protect and empower people through the process. I learned some of those lessons the hard way. 

Now, I teach women changemakers how to not only spot red flags and avoid mistakes, but also champion lived experience storytellers as the experts they are, rather than an ‘add-on’ to a media story.

Q5. How do you think AI will shape the media industry over the next 10 years?

As AI continues to reshape how news is made and consumed alongside shifting attention spans and reducing trust levels, our collective demand for real people with real stories will only grow. The best media advocates will treat lived experience as their most valuable media currency, bringing storytellers in earlier and working with them as true collaborators. Media advocates who start building that time and partnership into their media plans and strategies now will be the ones influencing the news agenda.