Joan Botkin Email & Phone Number

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

I am very pleased to be supporting the External Affairs team in promoting initiatives through the National Housing Strategy to increase affordable housing across Canada.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Providing on-call communications support for busy government and non-profit organizations. I understand that demands keep increasing while resources remain the same. My knowledge and experience means I can step in whenever you need, to help relieve the stress on your department. Whether it's a speech for an elected official, developing a Crisis Communications Plan, a news release, or a communications policy, I am here to assist you.

Okotoks, Ab

Providing strategic direction and advice to senior administration and Town Council on significant projects and issues, including crafting key messages, speeches and speaking notes. Acting as project lead for municipal engagement activities including developing strategic communications and public participation plans, creating meaningful survey questions, and reviewing and reporting on final survey results. Introduced a bimonthly, live video update from the mayor during the COVID pandemic.Facilitating Council-appointed task forces; leading engagement activities, crafting Council reports, and assisting in crafting final recommendations.Developing and implementing communication policies, procedures and standards including a Public Engagement Policy and Toolkit, which incorporated IAP2 standards.Managing external contractors including videographers, graphic and web designers.Supervising all online communication tools that included three websites, and several social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Hootsuite is used to manage and schedule posts and stories on all platforms. Building a culture of collaboration within the Community Engagement team, where staff supported each other in completing projects and meeting organizational needs. Liaising with media as the organization’s representativeSupervising front-end staff, identifying opportunities to create efficiencies and improve customer service.Supervising all communication efforts throughout the pandemic, focusing on Council’s strategic priorities of public safety, social wellness, and business retention.

Communication lead for this mid-sized municipality at the southern edge of Calgary. Implemented all communication functions and strategies including centralizing municipal processes and establishing policies and procedures to ensure consistency, accuracy and timeliness in all external communication. Provided consultation and support to all departments, senior management and elected officials. Increased and improved internal communication with all staff. Developed and managed the budgets for two departments and supervised up to seven staff. Selected Achievements:Overcame significant challenges with public suspicion to successfully create and establish a new logo for the Town of High River. that was unanimously adopted by council and embraced by the community. Developed a municipal newsletter that has become residents’ preferred information source for municipal news and saved more than $20,000 annually in advertising costs. Introduced Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as standard communication tools, achieving a 50% decrease in general inquiries to front-end staff. Integrated CP style into formalized corporate standards for all written materials, resulting in more than 50% of news releases being printed, verbatim, in local newspapers. Established formal policies and procedures that support consistent, branded communication throughout the organization. Established organizational templates for all communication materials.

High River

Employed to provide administrative and communication support to the superintendent’s office for this public school division south of Calgary, in the MD of Foothills. Crafted all communication materials for the Superintendent’s office including official correspondence, speaking notes and news releases. Responsible for organizing division events, including selecting speakers, venues, designing programs and supervising day-of activities. Edited and designed annual reports and plans.Introduced branding to support the new mission statement. Chaired the organization of a Bi-Annual Career and Education Expo for graduating students. By expanding event promotion in all schools and neighbouring divisions attendance increased (approx. 2,000). Succeeded in gaining society status for the Annual Young Authors’ conference, which made it possible to access grant funding to support this highly popular event. Introduced a web-based platform for a new division website. Supported individual schools to update their sites, using the same technology. This resulted in website content being more consistently updated and sites remaining current.Facilitated desktop design workshops for school-based administrative assistants, which helped to improve the look and professionalism of school newsletters. Supported all school administrators by developing templates for annual reports and plans. This streamlined the work and provided a consistent, corporate design to the publications.

Nanton, Alberta

Managed all production and design elements of a weekly newspaper including ads, page design and layout and all pre-press responsibilities. Designed pages for special features including all artwork, and completing layout.Wrote a weekly entertainment columnsSupervised production of a regional insert, including gathering and organizing content and advertising from five partnering newspapers, designing pages, creating advertising and completing all pre-press production.

Master'S Degree, Masters Of Arts - Communication Technology, Graduate Studies

Ba Arts, English

Ba Journalism And Communications, Journalism