Please consider me in your search for an Advocacy and Outreach Communications Lead. As my resume details, I have a wide range of experience writing different materials for many audiences and organizations.

I believe I have the creative inner voice required to produce writing that will meet your many needs, including the spoken word.

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 communications strategies for students, staff, faculty and the public. I also served as co-editor of the bi-weekly Gazette. In this role, I often presented technical information, in an engaging way, to a more general audience. Profiling new staff members, like Beatrice Medicine, was also a responsibility. 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 in Nanaimo, writing business articles about submersible cameras, for example, for The Nanaimo Business Examiner and, as daily reporter, front-page stories for The Nanaimo Daily Free Press. I then joined forest equipment manufacturer T-MAR Industries in Campbell River as the company’s Marketing Manager. Part of my duties included conducting customer surveys; producing advertising copy, brochures and videos, and launching the company’s newsletter, The T-MAR Times.

My Nanaimo experience also includes almost five years running a direct-mail advertising franchise, Val-Pak. As owner/operator, I helped small to medium size businesses develop direct-mail advertising promotions. Part of my duties included analyzing customer responses for clients.

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 my years overseas include co-authoring mathematics workbooks for vocational students and producing a student-illustrated video of my children’s story about life from an apple’s point of view, The Apple of Albert’s Eye. In addition to writing and narrating a film Truck Logging in Africa, I scripted, directed and edited my video application for the position of Traveling Ambassador for Air Transat.

Returning to Canada in 2012, I launched my WordPress website to highlight my creative abilities in writing, photography, art, music and video production. I used my blog to promote my work as an artist. I have a working knowledge of MS Office, Illustrator, Photoshop, WordPress and Movie Studio. As a practicing artist, I’ve written a number of proposals for art commissions, including a design for a Commemorative Centennial Spire for the City of Prince George, posted in parts one and two on my website.

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 role.