Parry Headrick is Founder and CEO of Crackle PR, the remote B2B tech public-relations firm he launched in 2020 after more than twenty years inside large tech PR agencies. A Boston University journalism graduate and former Lowell Sun reporter, he now pairs classic earned-media work with generative engine optimization for VC-backed startups and growth-stage companies.
From Hitchhiking to Boston University
Headrick left home at 16, hitchhiked for about a year and a half from Boston to Florida to Seattle, then sold shoes in Los Angeles before earning a GED. At Northern Essex Community College he became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and won a Los Angeles Times story-of-the-year award for reporting on unequal treatment of ESL students, a clip that helped him reach Boston University.
He graduated from BU's College of Communication with a journalism degree in 1998 and joined the Lowell Sun as a reporter. In a 2023 Daily Free Press profile, he described the adrenaline of covering two or three stories a day on deadline.
Leaving News Reporting
Early in his reporting career Headrick covered a boy whose illness was linked to chemicals dumped near his home. He told the Daily Free Press he promised the mother he would treat her son with dignity, then saw the Sunday front-page headline label the child "Toxic boy," words that had never appeared in his story or in anyone's quotes.
He called that moment a slap in the face and the reason he left journalism for PR: he wanted to use communications skills without sensational headlines, and he also wanted better pay. The same profile places him later as an account manager and vice president of marketing across PR firms before he founded his own shop.
From SHIFT to Crackle PR
At SHIFT Communications Headrick rose from account executive to Vice President of Marketing, working media relations, media training, and crisis communications for technology clients including Bing, Google, Hitachi Data Systems, Yelp, and Logitech. At Matter Communications he led marcomms as VP Marketing & Communications and counseled executives at firms such as Progress Software, Osram Sylvania, and Akamai.
In August 2020 he founded Crackle PR as a fully remote, senior-led B2B tech PR agency. His Crackle bio frames the firm around earned media that large language models can cite, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, fintech, martech, and infrastructure brands. He writes for the Forbes Agency Council on earned media and AI search, hosts the Under Embargo podcast, and has been quoted in outlets including The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Inc., PRWeek, and PR Daily.