She has been with nxt agency since September 2022. She combines her in-depth knowledge of communications with a sharp sense for news value and media relations. Within nxt, she is a trusted sparring partner for colleagues and clients alike, and she plays a key role in the agency’s ongoing professionalization. For Donna, PR is all about trust, expertise, and telling stories that people actually want to read. This is the story of Donna Broersen (32)
Donna knows that in PR, you can never fully control the outcome, but you can control relevance and quality. By keeping a sharp eye on news value, timing, and context, she helps clients share their expertise in the media in a credible way, even when the outcome isn't guaranteed in advance.
She grew up in ’t Zand and studied Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. During her studies, she gained a strong grasp of the theoretical side of communication and worked extensively on research into how communication can be used to influence behavior and public perception. She then went on to complete a Master’s in Persuasive Communication, where she delved into the art of persuasion. She applies that academic foundation to her work every day. Persuading journalists, crafting a sharp message, and positioning clients as experts are all, to her, forms of thoughtful communication.
Donna discovered the value of PR early on while handling marketing and PR for a festival. She saw how PR contributed to its success and noticed that media visibility had a different and more powerful impact than paid campaigns. During that time, she also realized she had a knack for building relationships with journalists. That insight motivated her to pursue the field further.
Before joining nxt agency, Donna held various roles in the media world. She was a campaign manager at a publishing house, a project manager at a media agency, and a communications advisor at a television broadcaster, where she started as an intern before moving into a full-time role. In those positions, she learned how newsrooms operate, how campaigns are structured, and how to use communication to get a message to the right audience at the right time.
What attracts Donna to PR is how it differs from marketing. In her view, PR is the reason people open a newspaper or follow the news. Ads are often skipped, but editorial stories are not. PR ensures that organizations are seen as experts rather than advertisers. That makes the impact greater and the credibility stronger.
Donna already knew Remi through the industry, which is how she ended up at nxt agency. From the start, the trust she was given felt special. She was quickly assigned her own clients, invited to meetings, and given the space to apply her own ideas. She was also given the freedom to contribute to the agency’s internal processes. That responsibility and openness made her feel that she could really build something here.
For Donna, PR is successful when it results in publications the client is proud of. If the client is happy, she is too. At the same time, she sees a major misunderstanding surrounding PR. Many organizations think PR can be managed like marketing and that the message is fully controllable. According to Donna, PR works differently. It’s about responding to current events and sharing expertise. You don’t get to decide exactly what is written or when, but you can ensure that a story is relevant and journalistically interesting.
Donna defines thought leadership by continuously monitoring what is happening in her clients' sectors and in society at large. She looks for hooks in the news and for what makes an organization unique. When those elements come together, it creates a story that journalists want to pick up.
What she considers nxt agency's greatest strength is the personal contact with clients and the speed at which the team operates. Short lines of communication and effective consultation ensure that wishes and goals are precisely aligned. She looks back with pride on the move to the larger office on the Keizersgracht. For her, that marked the moment nxt grew from a start-up into a mature agency and became a serious player in the market.
Donna finds the most challenging part of her work to be the dependence on journalists. You can craft a story perfectly, but ultimately, you don't decide whether it gets picked up. It is precisely that unpredictability that makes PR interesting to her.
For the coming years, Donna sees an important role for PR in relation to Large Language Models and generative search engines. PR contributes to authority and, consequently, to visibility within new forms of search and answering. That makes the profession more relevant than ever. In her role as team lead, she wants to further develop at a strategic level. She aims to bring structure, maintain an overview of pitches and press releases, and be a reliable sparring partner for the team. Her goal is for everyone to work independently and with confidence.
She also has a personal ambition. She wants to get a guest on a talk show one day. For her, that would be the ultimate example of high-impact PR.
Donna primarily works for clients in HR, tourism, and sports—sectors that align well with her interests, such as Quinyx and Sunny Cars. For them, she writes press releases and pitches, and helps sharpen their news value. She ensures that clients appear in the news in a way that fits their expertise and the story they want to tell. This makes Donna an indispensable link within nxt agency and a driving force behind the quality of the PR work.
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