Bon's Mots

(The fol­low­ing is a pro­file I wrote for my Public Relations Writing course. It was orig­i­nally pub­lished on The Word, the blog of the CC+PR pro­gram at Centennial.)

Kate Millar found her­self at a cross­roads fol­low­ing her stint in Centennial’s Corporate Communications and Public Relations program.

She wasn’t sure what kind of ca­reer she wanted, but knew event plan­ning had to be a part of it. It was only af­ter in­tern­ing at the York University Foundation that Millar found her true calling.

“A fundraiser is the per­fect time to in­ter­act with your donors and re­ally un­der­stand how your or­ga­ni­za­tion is im­pact­ing the world and the lo­cal com­mu­nity. You get to tap into the peo­ple who have a real love for [the cause].

“I then re­al­ized I am more of an event plan­ner than I am a PR person.”

Following her in­tern­ship, Millar was in­volved in plan­ning a run for 10,000 peo­ple for the Mississauga Marathon, an­other not-for-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion and a cause close to her runner’s heart. She also worked in the de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment at McMaster University be­fore end­ing up at the Toronto International Film Festival Group (TIFFG), a not-for-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion whose mis­sion is to trans­form the way peo­ple see the world through the mov­ing image.

As the de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tant for spe­cial events at TIFFG, Millar’s role in­cludes plan­ning stew­ard­ship events and plan­ning the film festival’s staff and vol­un­teer ap­pre­ci­a­tion party. But it is man­ag­ing the re­la­tion­ships with spon­sors that she finds the most chal­leng­ing and most rewarding.

“It’s get­ting these peo­ple on board and pitch­ing it in a way that says, ‘You have to give it to us for free.’” Her pas­sion and ex­pe­ri­ence in the not-for-profit sec­tor have made Millar very suc­cess­ful in main­tain­ing strong part­ner­ships with TIFFG sponsors.

Millar cred­its her suc­cess­ful ca­reer to the com­pre­hen­sive na­ture of Centennial’s pro­gram, and uses the knowl­edge she gained to this day. “It gives you a great base of solid skills. You can start off in one area in your ca­reer and a cou­ple of years later come to an­other sec­tor where you have to start draw­ing on dif­fer­ent skills.

Millar be­lieves she learned the most from the Event Management course. “It taught you how to go out into the com­mu­nity, re­ally fo­cus on the vi­sion and rea­son you are throw­ing an event.” She is also grate­ful for the writ­ing courses and ad­vises cur­rent and fu­ture stu­dents not to take them lightly. “Even if you don’t take a heavy writ­ing job, you still need to be very vig­i­lant about your mes­sag­ing and how you communicate.

“There will be courses you re­ally en­joy and there will be courses you don’t en­joy,” she says, “but you just have to do the work; you never know when you will have to draw on the skills they teach you.”