Farewell to Renate Skoff
Today we have the sad task of informing you and all our long-time clients, business partners and companions that
Dkfm. Renate Skoff,
the founder of The Skills Group, passed away on 12/12/2022, after a long illness at the age of 76. We are infinitely sad and with her in our thoughts.
Renate Skoff was the founder of the agency and, as co-owner and managing director until 2007, shaped the standards and success of Skills for decades. From the 1970s onwards, she was also a pioneer for the entire PR industry – with her commitment to shaping and professionalizing this then still new communications discipline, in Austria and far beyond. In 1975, for example, Renate was a co-founder and long-time Secretary General of the Austrian Public Relations Association (PRVA), a driving force behind the founding of the Austrian PR Ethics Council and, for decades, a highly esteemed lecturer at the University of Vienna. Generations of students, staff and PR consultants in Austria have benefited from her expertise – and her unstinting willingness to pass this knowledge on to younger colleagues. In 2017, Renate Skoff became the first Austrian to be inducted into the “PR Hall of Fame” of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO).
With her utmost professionalism, her uncompromising standards of professional ethics and quality, her self-sacrificing commitment to her clients, her guidance and care for employees, and her drive for the entire communications industry, she will always be a role model for all of us.
Renate will always be remembered as a formative personality in the Austrian communications industry, as an agency manager, colleague, mentor and coach – but also as a worldly, educated, well-traveled and art-loving conversationalist with style and elegance, as a friend with her warmth, as a fine and very special person.
Our special sympathy goes to Renate’s husband, Paul Sills, who together with her founded and built up The Skills Group and led it so successfully for many years.
Management, partners and staff
The Skills Group