Companies and high-profile people had a raft of financial and reputational trouble last year.

Activist investors turned up the heat on company boards in new and creative ways. Companies had to reckon with a global pandemic, vaccine mandates, and diversity and inclusion issues.

Bad news travels fast, and employees and consumers are demanding more of companies and public figures.

For people like Michael Sitrick at Sitrick & Company, Jeremy Fielding of Kekst, and Juda Engelmayer of HeraldPR who are hired to manage the fallout, it’s been a busy and lucrative time.

Business Insider identified the crisis PR pros who handled the biggest volume and most high-profile and controversial assignments of the past year.

Sitrick set the modern standard for crisis management when he tamped down a crisis for the grocery chain Food Lion after ABC aired a news segment in 1992 about its food-handling practices.

Sitrick used outtakes from the segment to pinpoint lapses in ABC’s reporting, according to The New York Times, in what became a case study taught by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Lately, he’s been representing financial giants like Bill Gross, a cofounder of PIMCO who was mired in a messy divorce; religious organizations like the Diocese of Rockville, which filed for Chapter 11 to handle legal expenses and settlements with abuse survivors; and celebrities like ESPN broadcaster Rachel Nichols, who was ousted from her position after recorded comments she made about a Black colleague were leaked.