Christine Bernard, M.C.M
Read interview with Christine
Christine is a results-oriented communications professional with more than seven years of experience, specializing in internal communications. She is currently a Manager for the Employee Relations division at Air Canada and has a firm grasp of corporate messaging, branding, event planning and leadership communications. Christine has always been passionate about the telecommunications industry and enjoys enhancing employee and customer engagement through internal and external communications, along with testing new products and services. She has had success facilitating the development of employee communication initiatives including leadership blogs, vlogs, town halls, emails and speaking notes, as well as identified communication gaps between management and front-line employees. Her work has resulted in new processes that better support internal stakeholders in day to day operations.
Lonny Kates, M.C.M
Lonny is a seasoned communications professional with more than 16 years of experience in public affairs, media relations, project management and strategic communications. He has held various communications positions within the Federal Public Service and is experienced in working with senior executive levels, including the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office, several Federal Ministers and senior military officials. Lonny has had a varied career including working as a television news producer, covering federal elections, Olympics and Remembrance Day Ceremonies. While working for the public service, he was responsible for media relations for the 2010 G-8 and G-20 Summits in Ontario. Since 2014 Lonny has been managing public affairs at the Department of National Defence (DND). In this role he has coordinated communications for national events such as the 2017 Invictus Games, the visits of the Royal Family in Canada, Ceremonial Guard activities on Parliament Hill, and Canada Day celebrations.
Cathy Cowan, MBA
Cathy has worked on high profile PR campaigns with some of the most brilliant brands & marketers in Canada. She’s a 20-year PR agency veteran with an MBA, who founded Cowan & Company Communications—a communications agency specializing in premium lifestyle brands—which has been recognized 4 times as IABC/Toronto’s Boutique PR Agency of the Year. In addition to winning numerous awards for marketing communications, media relations, special events, publications, social media and social responsibility, she’s collaborated with trailblazing brands, including L’Oreal Paris, Kraft, Jamieson Vitamins, Cisco, Expedia, Nintendo and Food Banks Canada. But, ultimately, extraordinary communications results are her driving passion and greatest professional reward. She’s thrilled to share these real-world Canadian PR successes and best practices with her students at York University.
Heath Applebaum
Heath is a global-award-winning communications expert who has taught thousands of PR students at five different universities and colleges across Canada over the past 10 years. Outside of the classroom, he is the President of Echo Communications Inc., a reputation management consulting firm that helps companies across North America. Heath is a sought-after industry thought leader that has spoken at 70 conferences around the world and teaches communicators around the world through the International Association of Business Communicators Academy.
Heath has previously taught at the University of Guelph-Humber, Humber College, University of Victoria, and McMaster University, and has been a PR curriculum developer for Centennial College. His teaching philosophy is predicated on bringing the real world into the classroom to prepare his students for future success. He generously shares his 20 years of diverse marketing, PR and journalism experience from the corporate, agency, consulting and non-profit sectors with his students. Heath has been published in a university textbook and international journals. He was recently re-elected for his fourth consecutive term on the Board of Director’s for the Canadian Public Relations Society.
Fundamentals of Public Relations
Develop a foundational understanding of how communication strategies, tactics, and writing apply to public relations management. A real-world approach will be used to showcase the depth and breadth of the profession across a variety of sectors including: corporate, non-profit, agency and government.
Content Creation, Strategic Messaging & Storytelling
Public Relations storytelling goes beyond pretty words and pictures, skilled PR professionals must clearly communicate a strong message. Develop strategic key messages as the foundation for creating engaging content for an array of public relations channels including print, online, broadcast, video, and social media. Apply real-world public relations content development techniques to sharpen your written, verbal, visual, and digital communication skills.
Internal Communications and Change Management
Be introduced to key internal communications concepts, channels, theories, best practices, trends, and skills to be an effective public relations practitioner. Gain insight into how internal communicators support the organization’s goals–while engaging with internal audiences.
Reputation Management and Crisis Communication
Learn the steps necessary to address and overcome crisis communication and reputation management issues. Identify issues that may pose a threat to an organization’s reputation (both proactively and reactively), assess the best communications options for drafting a crisis response, select tools for monitoring a business issue in real-time and examine the importance of social media and owned content channels during a time of crisis.
Integrated Marketing Strategies
Integrated marketing combines public relations, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and social media to sustain a consistent message with a given target audience. Analyze how integrated marketing strategies are developed and used to plan, execute, and measure across various traditional, digital and social media channels.
Stakeholder Relations & Community Engagement
Gain an understanding of the key relationship-building tactics needed to be an effective public relations practitioner. Learn how to effectively perform as a spokesperson for an organization (the art of media relations), leveraging concepts of corporate social responsibility, marketing, stakeholder relations, government relations, and more. The primary objective of this course is to understand the role that a public relations professional must play when supporting their organization and how their role influences their organization’s credibility in the eyes of the public.
Strategic Planning, Research & Measurement
Mastering the skills of strategy, strategic planning and thinking will serve you through your entire career as a communication professional. Learn how to define and use strategy to help brands and products achieve objectives, develop initiatives, and increase exposure to a target audience by using research, insights, measurement and project management to create and execute strategic programs.
Public Relations in Practice: Real World Perspectives and Possibilities
Apply the fundamental skills learned in previous public relations courses to current, relevant and challenging scenarios. Students will develop and execute public relations campaign strategies from the vantage point of agency or client in a fast paced, real-world learning environment. Gain firsthand knowledge and experience into the opportunities that await you upon graduation.
UNIVERSITY CREDENTIAL
REAL-WORLD PROJECTS
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES
Business
Liberal Arts
Communications
Journalism
Media
Political Science
English
Marketing