As my 12 months as CIPR president reaches a conclusion, it’s time to reflect on a busy, constructive year and look forward to continuing the institute’s march towards professionalism in 2015.

This year, the CIPR has had a back-to-basics focus on its vision and purpose, returning the institute to its roots of professionalism as set out in our Royal Charter, as well as to shift the organisation towards being better networked and member-led.

That vision is simply to promote professionalism in public relations for practitioners, and in the public interest. We have sought to align the organisation firmly with this vision in 2014 through changes to governance, operational activity, campaigning and thought leadership. This focus and sense of purpose has been helpful in defining priorities. It has made decision making straightforward, removing emotion and informing what we do and more importantly what we don’t.

The CIPR is a very different from the organisation that I took on 12 months ago. We’ve reformed our governance to make the organisation more purposeful and business focused. The council has been slimmed down from 50 to 30 people with a board of directors.

This work has set in stone a CIPR which is more active, more relevant and exercises more effective leadership of the profession. We have also drawn a greater focus on our purpose to promote the highest level of professionalism in public relations through skills, knowledge and research. We’ve further invested in content, policy and education, making membership more relevant to members and taken a firm grip on the business overhauling the finance and IT. We’ve sought to state a clear value proposition to members whatever the stage of their career from students to chartered PR practitioners.

This march to professionalism will culminate at the start of next year when we publish Chartered Public Relations, an anthology of modern-day public relations best practice from our very own chartered public relations practitioners. It makes a valuable contribution to the advancement of public relations thinking worldwide by addressing the most current discussions on topics such as qualification of results in public relations, internal communications, freedom of information, global communication and more.

During my presidency, we’ve led campaigning on professional standards, equality, gender, wearables, modernisation and social business.

Developing links between practice and academia will be my personal theme as past president. My view is that without academic rigour and a historical perspective to support practice we’re limited to craft and tactics. As a practitioner, channels may change over time but if your expertise is rooted in education and continuous learning, your core knowledge will be readily transferable.

Our business is changing incredibly quickly. We need research to help contextualise change. In older professional disciplines such as business, engineering and medicine, academic and professional interests are aligned and work together for the benefit of their sectors.

I’ve had the good fortune to benefit from the energy and focus of our new chief executive Alastair McCapra and the team under his leadership. I owe them all my gratitude to responding so positively to the changes that we have made. I’d also like to thank the board and council for supporting and helping see through my modernisation agenda.

If 2014 has been a year of modernization, 2015 must continue and consolidate this agenda. There is still much to do, and I look forward to working alongside my successors Sarah Pinch and Rob Brown in 2015.

Stephen Waddington is president of the CIPR