The Prime Girls in Communications Awards highlights an incredible group of communications leaders who constantly affect and encourage everybody round them. Honorees embrace neighborhood givers, disaster navigators, DE&I champions, mentors, trailblazers, visionaries, rising stars and plenty of extra.
And to not be ignored, we’re welcoming a brand new class of Corridor of Fame inductees. This 12 months consists of Susan Donlan, chief communications officer at KeyCorp, Kathy Krenger, chief communications officer at Kraft Heinz, and Marian Salzman, senior vp of world communications at Philip Morris Worldwide.
Donlan shared what she needs she’d identified earlier in her profession: “You understand, at the start of my profession, I used to be at all times in an enormous hurry. All the time what got here subsequent. And now I actually attempt to decelerate and revel in simply being within the second and taking my time.”
In anticipation of this 12 months’s celebration, taking place Feb. 29 in New York Metropolis, we supplied honorees an opportunity to share both their greatest piece of recommendation for rising comms professionals or one thing they wished they’d identified earlier of their profession. Under are only a handful of what this 12 months’s class needed to say.
Jennifer Hines, chief communications officer at Tyler Impartial College District, is an award-winning information anchor with 20 years of media expertise throughout Texas. She joined the tutorial communications trade in 2019, proper earlier than faculties throughout the nation have been plunged into uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hines oversaw the district’s two flagship excessive faculties altering their names; crafting Return to Be taught pointers through the pandemic with messaging for folks, workers, the neighborhood and media; boosting recruitment efforts because the nation grappled with trainer shortages; and launching a bus driver hiring marketing campaign that acquired nationwide and native protection.
Yolanda Schufford, chief communications & public affairs officer at Past Finance, protects shoppers by educating the general public and influencing policymakers about debt points. She was instrumental in serving to stave off doubtlessly restrictive laws for North Carolina shoppers in debt decision applications and helped rework doubtlessly dangerous insurance policies in California. In New York and New Jersey, Schufford was a part of a group that launched a mannequin invoice designed to provoke constructive trade laws.
Jill Zuckman, considered one of 5 companions at SKDK, has discovered herself in pivotal moments which have made international information. One in all Zuckman’s standout achievements is her management within the media marketing campaign to free Alan Gross, an American unjustly imprisoned in Cuba for over 5 years. Her efforts stored the media engaged, constructing public stress that led to a historic announcement by President Obama, thawing relations between the U.S. and Cuba, which resulted in Gross’ freedom.
Daybreak Buzynski, assistant vp of communications at Hy-Vee, Inc., handles conventional communication duties, together with overseeing Hy-Vee’s PR group, serving as its spokesperson, burnishing the corporate’s model picture, and devising its company messaging, however she additionally oversees the chain’s appreciable CSR actions. Buzynski spearheaded Hy-Vee’s Homefront effort, which helps army members and their households and raised greater than $475,000 to help veterans in 2022.
Rhiannon D’Angelo-Parsons, director of exterior communications & media engagement at Reynolds American Inc., is skilled as a media spokesperson and model champion, directing advertising efforts and main disaster communications and social media efforts. In her three years at Reynolds, D’Angelo-Parsons has demonstrated her unique considering and strategic prowess in navigating the complexities of the regulated and negatively perceived trade. Notably, she has communicated the corporate’s variety and inclusion ambitions, reaching recognition for office inclusion whereas highlighting achievements throughout varied platforms.
Nina Devlin, senior vp and chief communications officer at Vertex Prescription drugs, guides medicines by way of improvement, trials and approvals in a number of international markets. Her mantra, “at all times keep hands-on,” means she’s intimately concerned in constructing relationships with healthcare media and regulators. As a frontrunner in a world firm, she should preserve an unlimited community and information base but in addition assume strategically whereas working in worldwide markets.
Additionally, don’t overlook to try the profiles of all of the Prime Girls in Communications, out there after the occasion.
Are you aware somebody who ought to be honored as a Prime Girls in Communications? The decision for entries for the 2025 class of Prime Girls in Communications Awards can be open quickly. The deadline to enter is October 18, 2024.
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