Please consider me in your search for a Communications Coordinator. As my resume details, I have a wide range of experience creating communications for many audiences and organizations.
After completing my Education degree at the U of A (with a major in art) and serving as a writer/production editor for the Students’ Union Gateway, I joined The University of Calgary as a Communications Officer II. In this position, I worked with university administrators to implement communication plans for students, staff and the public. I also served as co-editor of the bi-weekly Gazette. In this role, I was often called upon to create copy that made technical information accessible to a general audience. My article on digital mapping is an example. Profiling new staff members was also a responsibility, as my article on Beatrice Medicine illustrates. I was also called upon to provide photography, illustration and design skills.
After almost five years with the U of C, I accepted a position as a Journalism Instructor at the then Grant MacEwan Community College. Preferring to “do rather than to teach,” I joined Southam Business Communications in Vancouver as Western Editor for Canadian Forest Industries Magazine, providing copy on all aspects of the business including harvesting, safety and milling. I then settled with my family in Nanaimo where I worked as a weekly and daily reporter for The Nanaimo Business Examiner and Nanaimo Daily Free Press. I also ran my own direct-mail advertising business for almost five years. This experience helped me learn how to evaluate the measurable success of this type of promotion.
I then joined forest equipment manufacturer T-MAR Industries in Campbell River as the company’s Marketing Manager, where I conducted customer surveys, produced advertising copy and brochures, and launched the company’s newsletter, The T-MAR Times. I also designed the company’s booth for the annual Truck Loggers Association in Vancouver.
A downturn in the industry led to leave T-MAR and spend 10 years overseas teaching in Libya, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Norway, the UAE and Japan. Highlights of this period include co-authoring mathematics workbooks for vocational students in Al Ain, UAE and producing the student-illustrated video of my children’s story about life from an apple’s point of view, The Apple of Albert’s Eye.
Returning to Canada in 2012, I relocated to Prince George, BC and served in a variety of positions including a Community Care Aide and Licensed Property Manager. At this time, I launched my WordPress website to highlight my creative abilities in writing, photography, art, music and video production. I invite you to explore the links to each of these areas of my artistic expression. I have a working knowledge of MS Office, Illustrator, Photoshop and Movie Studio.
I relocated to Edmonton, the city of my birth, in April, 2021.
As a practicing artist, I’ve written a number of proposals for art commissions, including serving as a team leader for a proposal to design The Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa. Other proposals have included a design for a Commemorative Centennial Spire for the City of Prince George, posted as parts one and two on my website.
Thank you for the time taken to read this letter and, hopefully as well, for the time taken to view or read a few of the samples of my work. I’m a creative thinker and visualizer with a gift for turning old ideas into fresh expressions of what was meant before they became clichés. This has allowed me, with confidence, to add creative to the name of my website and to make thinking “outside the circle” an ongoing part of what I have to offer. Let me suggest, then, that we meet to discuss the contribution I could make to your organization in this