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Presented by: Priya Bates, Co-founder, A Leader Like Me & Advita Patel, Director, CommsRebel 2020 highlighted both challenges and opportunities for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Starting with protests and performative gestures, individuals and organizations started asking for performance and proof of true change personally and professionally.  A Leader Like Me, with its roots in a connection that started at the 2019 IABC World Conference in Vancouver has evolved into a business launched during pandemic supporting women of colour and amplifying diverse voices around the globe.   In this session, we'll discuss: - The impact when employees and customers can't see A Leader Like Me in their organizations - How to manage imposter syndrome and build confidence through community  - How to turn awareness into action when it comes to diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging - The important role of communication professionals and the profession itself in supporting and driving change  Individually and collectively, it's about time we drive needed change. Read more

Speaker: Jenifer Bice, Senior Director - Event Solutions, Walmart Do you have enough TIME? Do your audiences? Are you making your content relevant in these days of Zoom fatigue to capture that precious TIME? We’ve all made the shift to virtual over the past year +, and in this session you’ll learn from Walmart, the world’s largest company, about why it was named one of the 10 most innovative brands in events in 2020.   You’ll get ideas, tips and real examples about planning virtual events, engaging audiences, infusing creativity and keeping their attention. Because it’s about time we learn from each other and deliver virtual events that engage, inspire, and feel real and meaningful – without creating fatigue. Together, we’ll look at how events are evolving and how we’ll take what we’re learning now into the future, when we can be in person once again. Read more

Speaker: Roxy Tomacder, Corporate Communication & Aloha Experience Manager, King's Hawaiian What's W.A.T.A!? As communications professionals, we are like "ninjas" behind the scenes defeating challenges and with no expectation for praise. In addition, we are constantly called upon to meet the needs of multiple (if not all) departments within our organizations that we lose sight of our purpose.  W.A.T.A! is an acronym representing foundational elements to trigger a focused communications plan. In this session, you're invited to learn this method and apply it to any future communications projects!  Read more

Speaker: Diana Hong, Managing Director, CRA, Inc. What the research and our experiences show is that during virtual work, our networks narrow down - our strong ties get stronger and our weak ties get weaker. Even within a team, we find that our day to day fills from more meetings with those whom we closely collaborate with and little to no interaction with others we used to see in hallways, break rooms, cafeterias, near the printer or coffee machine. But research also shows creativity and career opportunities come from casual collisions - from the expanded network beyond immediate connections or people you know in passing. So how do we reconcile this? We're in an era of work that means it's about time to better leverage hybrid or fully remote work environments. In this session, we'll cover pointers from academia, real-life examples, and suggestions for organizational communications leaders through presentation, exercises, breakout sessions, and live polling. Read more

Speaker: Laurence Simard, Communication advisor, PCN Physio Are you hoping your organization was a little less hierarchical? Is your organization in the process of flattening its structure? Have you joined a self organized team? If so, you may be wondering how to maximize your impact as a communication leader in this less traditional business model.  Get inspired to reinvent your role as leadership structures shift in your organization. A 200 employees healthcare business lets you in on strategies and tactics that brought efficient communications into its new leadership structure.  Get insights on how to: - Understand how your internal clients will evolve and how to adapt to their changing needs - Help colleagues navigate the high information flow by ensuring cohesiveness of the messages, timing and relevance. - Coach and provide the right tools to colleagues so they can communicate efficiently  It's about time traditional leadership models evolve and when they do, communicators will be ready! Read more

Speaker: Kelley Teahen, Vice President, Communications and Marketing, Parachute Leading up to cannabis legalization in Canada in 2018, there was a concerted public relations effort to show the relative harmlessness of cannabis. As an injury prevention charity, however, Parachute could see from the evidence the harms that increased with more-open cannabis use: unintentional childhood exposure in the home; and increase in impairment-caused injury on our roads. We received funding from our federal government to address these two issues in national public relations campaigns: But how to reach cannabis users who are dismissive of any kind of fear-mongering about their now-legal recreational drug of choice? Parachute VP Kelley Teahen will walk you through the research, campaign development and execution of campaigns "Know What Impaired Means and "High and Locked", where we used humour and a peer-to-peer approach to reach our audiences. The presentation will use participant polls and chat Q&A to engage with the campaign process and creative asset review. Read more