Cathy Browne, Media Liaison and Public Relations Concierge for MHC ‘09
At the beginning of the planning stages of Mental Health Camp, both Isabella and I knew that we would need to deal with members of the mainstream media who would be interested in learning more about MHC and its objectives. Little did we know that we would be blessed with the PR wizardry of Cathy Browne, who just recently relocated to Vancouver from California.
Armed with 20 years of PR experience, Cathy wrote our press release, coordinated the release efforts with NewsWire, liaised with each and every one of our media outlets (including The Georgia Straight, The Vancouver Sun and the CBC) and managed to assuage any concerns of MHC participants in regards to how they could deal with media, should any reporters approach participants. She ensured that Isabella and I would be prepared to deal with tough questions from the media and coached us on how to best broach thorny subjects. As Cathy mentions in her blog post, her career began in non-profits, and her 20 years of experience showed very clearly. Cathy very happily supported Isabella and myself throughout the organizational process, thereby becoming our very own Media Liaison and Public Relations Concierge.
We can’t thank Cathy enough for all the time she devoted to Mental Health Camp, for free. As I’ve mentioned before, each and every hour that every person who volunteered their time for MHC’09 was an hour that they could have otherwise billed (or enjoyed a relaxing and leisurely day). If you have PR and media liaison needs, trust me – Cathy knows her stuff inside and out. Her LinkedIn profile can be found here, and she is on Twitter as @cathybrowne.
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I’ve had the privilege of working with Cathy .. in a word, she’s amazing!
She did a first-class job on the two projects we worked on together .. she’s first (second and third too) on my list for any kind of PR work!