Effective Leadership Communications: Amidst DEIB Setbacks
IABC Philly's first-ever Livestream event.
Think about how Target, Kohl's, North Face, and others have suffered for supporting DEIB causes.
Imagine you were at the helm of corporate communications in these companies or the leader in these companies facing the heat!
- What would be your communication strategy for this crisis as a leader?
- How would you protect your employees, assets, and reputation?
- With minimum or no casualties, how will you create a win-win-win for all?
That's what we will explore in this interactive debate-style session.
Our speaker, Srijata Bhatnagar, is a true expert in leading through tough times. She'll bring together voices from different corners, sparking a live conversation.
Get ready to dive in, share your thoughts and soak in others'. Witness how powerful leadership communications can turn tough times into triumphs.
Let's explore together!
Takeaways
By the end of the program, you will leave with:
- Clarity on the most effective way of creating and delivering official leadership communications during the DEIB crisis.
- How to look strong without adopting an aggressive communication strategy.
- Communicating empathically and compassionately towards all groups.
- Establishing inspirational leadership through communications in the face of such challenges.
About Srijata Bhatnagar
Srijata is a Setback Leadership Champion, speaker, and author of two books. She works with C-suite leaders, women leaders, and organizations to convert their setbacks into opportunities for exponential growth.
Srijata believes that setbacks are awesome when you turn them around to discover the opportunities hidden behind them. She has arrived at a Setback SOP with her deep work on the topic, drawing inspiration from her professional, personal, and entrepreneurial setbacks. This strategic approach to handling adversities builds resilience in business leaders and pushes them to churn productive decisions even in a crisis.
She is known for her deep insights, relatable anecdotes, and approachable demeanor. Her work has inspired 50k+ business leaders in 10+ countries. She has delivered 100+ programs since 2017, written two books (Setback Leadership and SOAR) and numerous blogs, and contributed to four anthologies. She also hosts a podcast named Setback Leadership.
Srijata's humble beginnings as a small-town brown Indian girl who faced many corporate biases, stereotypes, and adversities in her career put her in an advantageous position to share these unique perspectives around Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
Her second book, SOAR, addresses women and marginalized groups' challenges during the post-pandemic world. Making her extra sensitive to the present DEIB needs to give her an edge to discuss this topic.
Registration information coming soon.
Change Management: Getting Around the New AI-Assisted Workplace
By Diane Streleckis - Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to a workplace near you. It feels like a whole new world. But as Women Conquer Business founder Jen McFarland pointed out, it’s just one of many changes that have remade the landscape of work.
Read moreWho are the people in your neighbourhood? A persona-based approach to employee engagement
No matter the organization, data and insights show our people are flooded with information. There is no “one size fits all” approach when we engage and communicate with our people. We need to segment and target. Using personae is about finding a way to communicate messages to a global audience that are designed with a specific someone in mind, rather than a generic 'everyone.'
To shift mindsets and behaviors, create employee advocates, and deliver on organizational vision, we need to frame our communications and engagement around our people. A single, top-down approach won’t work. We need to meet them where they are. Personae should be actionable, i.e. we need to be able to communicate and engage directly with them, so we can shift mindsets and behaviors to deliver on the strategy and vision. The aim of personas is to group our people in a way that helps us cater for meaningful differences among them.
Takeaways
- Learn about the concept of persona-based employee communications and how to apply it in your organization.
- Recognize how to use persona-based communication within your organization with actionable steps to initiate persona development.
- Discover how to advocate for persona-based communication with senior leaders and business partners with concrete examples.
- The session will include an open Q&A for attendees to ask questions and learn from each other.
About Carla Guest, Senior Communications Manager, Siemens Energy
An accredited and award-winning professional communicator, Carla’s focus is to deliver on strategic objectives while meeting, and exceeding, stakeholders’ needs and expectations. Her extensive experience in communications is based on more than 25 years of professional practice for such diverse organizations as the Canadian federal government, educational institutions, and the private sector. In her current role, Carla develops and implements employee communications for a workforce of 100K. Carla is passionate about personas and employee engagement. For her, internal communications is about delivering the right messages to the right people at the right time. Outside of her work with Siemens Energy, Carla is a proud hockey/lacrosse mom to three great kids!
Cut Through the Clutter
Featuring Ann Wylie
Co-sponsored by IABC New York Tristate Chapter
Is your copy easy to read? According to communication experts, that’s one of the two key questions people ask to determine whether to read a piece — or toss it.
Fortunately, academics have tested and quantified what makes copy easy to read. Unfortunately, that research virtually never makes it out of the ivory tower and into the hands of writers who could actually apply it.
But you’ll leave this session with readability targets to hit to reach all of your audience members, tools to measure your copy’s readability and techniques for hitting those targets. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:
- Measurably boost readability with our 6-step system.
- Use a cool, free tool to measure and manage reading ease.
- Figure out how long your message really should be.
- Hit the targets. What’s the best length for paragraphs? Sentences? Words?
- Increase reading by hitting one key on your keyboard more often.
About Ann Wylie
Ann Wylie works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out.
Ann’s popular workshops take her from Hollywood to Helsinki, helping communicators in organizations like NASA, Novartis and Merck polish their skills and find new inspiration for their work.
Before launching her writing, training and consulting firm, Ann was:
- Editor of a nationally acclaimed executive magazine
- A media relations professional at a boutique PR firm
- Wditor of Hallmark’s employee communications channel
During her tenure at Hallmark, Ann’s communication channel was named the best of its kind in the nation by Women In Communications and best of its kind in the world by the International Association of Business Communicators.
In all, Ann’s work has earned nearly 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills.
Ann is the author of a dozen learning tools, including RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers.
Unleash Your Creativity with AI -- Interview With Our July 2023 Speaker
By Diane Streleckis -- Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to do more than simply save communication professionals time or boost productivity—although it can certainly do both those things. Innovation expert Gina Debogovich shared how AI can invigorate your creativity so the messages and experiences you create connect with the people you’re trying to reach.
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By Diane Streleckis - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is the next transformation of business. As with so many water-cooler words, people make assumptions about their meaning. But what happens when those assumptions don’t match others’ meanings? Or if an assumption is off the mark?
Empowering Voices and Breaking Barriers: Speakers and Panelists Bios
Luke-Matthew Iveson
Their experience includes DEI communication campaigns, engagement programmes, leadership and employee development, global strategy development and activation. Luke-Matthew works with clients across various industries, including Capgemini, Nissan, AstraZeneca and GSK. Prior to joining, Luke was an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, delivering lectures on queer and gender studies, alongside their further studies. |
Kim Clark
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Lili Gil Valletta
Lili is one of less than 1% of Latinas serving on a Fortune 500+ public board, as an independent director for the global youth retailer Zumiez (NASDAQ: ZUMZ) and RCN Television (BVC: RCNTELEVI). She also serves as Chairwoman of the FRIENDS of the National American Latino Museum and is an investor and operating executive board member for AUA Private Equity Partners, an investment firm that has deployed over $475 million in capital to scale family-owned and Hispanic-focused businesses. |
J.L. Grayson
J.L. collaborates with the best and brightest within organizations across disciplines, she holds a core belief that “when we all contribute to the conversation, a more holistic story emerges”. In her current role as Director, Brand Strategy, many of her efforts are centered around consistently delivering differentiating messaging and creative, that will continuously result in the identification and preference of treatment and care. |
Steve Jones
Prior to founding pocstock, Steve founded an award-winning digital agency recognized for creating innovative digital creative, marketing, and technologies for hundreds of companies including Colgate Palmolive, Cartoon Network, NBC Universal, 9/11 Memorial, NYU, Rutgers University, Pfizer, Whole Foods, Pepsico Frito Lay, Port Authority of NY & NJ, and more. Steve started his first entrepreneurial venture at the age of 16 and since has owned an independent record label, recording studio, social network, and a video game company. He also gained valuable corporate experience working at large companies like Chase Manhattan Bank, Cardinal Health, Barnes & Noble, and Morgan Stanley. Steve was born in Barbados, raised in Brooklyn, NY and now resides in NJ with his lovely wife Marie, five beautiful children, organic vegetable garden, and his Xbox One. |
Claire Riggs
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Lilly Cortes Wyatt
Lilly has extensive experience in media, having worked in journalism, marketing communications, and public relations for both general and multicultural audiences. She spent nearly 20 years in news broadcasting as Executive Producer, Host, Producer, and Assignment Editor for NBC Universal, ABC, Univision, and Telemundo affiliates in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento regions. Her bilingual skills in Spanish and English were instrumental in connecting important sources to community members for creating powerful feature stories. Lilly firmly believes teamwork is essential in providing strategic integrated communication plans that utilize existing media relations and establish new contacts to secure high-level placements in print, broadcast, and online media. |
Adena White
Adena obtained a bachelor’s degree in speech communication and journalism with an emphasis in public relations from Arkansas Tech University and was inducted into ATU's Hall of Distinction in 2021 as an Outstanding Young Alumna. She completed a master’s degree in applied communication studies from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and, in 2022, received the department’s “Alumni Making a Difference Award.” She was selected as a 2023 Arkansas Business 40 Under 40 honoree. Adena achieved her Accreditation in Public Relations through the Public Relations Society of America and earned a Certificate in Social Impact Storytelling from Georgetown University. She is a highly requested speaker on storytelling and has presented at industry and association conferences, including PRSA ICON, the Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism, the Kentucky Travel Industry Association, and the Mid-America Cable Telecommunications Association’s Mid-America Cable Show. |
Luke-Matthew Iveson (they/them) is the Director of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Centre of Excellence at Forty1, an employee engagement agency. They harness the power of diversity, equity and inclusion to create better employee experiences, working with clients to turn DEI commitments into action.
Kim Clark has focused her career on messaging, audiences and how communications shape people's experiences. Her career spans documentary filmmaking, agency partnerships with the Discovery Channel, and leading global internal communication teams at KLA, PayPal, GoDaddy and GitHub. She is known for her ability to facilitate sensitive and yet urgent conversations to make meaningful progress in creating inclusive workplaces. She speaks at conferences, runs custom workshops and consults with companies on all things diversity, equity and inclusion communications related. She lives in California with her two cats, two kids, and one girlfriend. 
Lili is a former corporate executive turned entrepreneur, Cultural Intelligence® expert, and television business commentator known for her analysis of data and cultural trends impacting our economy and businesses. As an immigrant from Colombia, who came to the U.S. at the age of 17 without speaking English, she embodies the American Dream going from corporate executive turned entrepreneur. After a successful corporate career, including a 10-year tenure at Johnson & Johnson, where she pioneered multicultural marketing efforts for the Pharma sector and co-founded the Hispanic employee resource group “HOLA”, Lili co-founded the marketing agency 
J.L. Grayson is a brand strategist and analyst with nearly twenty years of synthesizing consumer data, blending analytics and marketing to create practical strategies to build brand equity.
Steve is the Founder & CEO of pocstock, a global diversity stock media company that unapologetically focuses on positive images of people of color. Steve is a serial entrepreneur who has spent over 20 years leading marketing and technology companies to solve everyday problems.
A driven and accomplished professional, Claire has more than 25 years of experience in developing, implementing and managing strategic communications, as well as relationship and reputation management, in corporate, regional and independent site settings. She has specialized talent in internal and external communications, crisis management, government affairs, media relations, brand development and marketing strategies.
Lilly is the founder of SociosPR, a Latina-owned, full-service multicultural creative communications company with a deep fluency in the nuances of cultural competence. Lilly and her team work with diverse communities for private enterprises and public agencies.
Adena J. White is an accredited public relations professional and social-impact storyteller with more than 15 years of experience leading communications efforts for place-based nonprofit organizations. In 2017, she founded Blackbelt Media to tell the stories of changemakers working to make the South a better place for all. Blackbelt Media produces the Blackbelt Voices podcast, which tells stories from and about Black folks down South that honor Black history, celebrate Black Southern culture, and shape the future of the region.Toner Receives Bartley Medallion from Villanova School of Business
Cathy J. Toner, JD, Assistant Dean, Villanova School of Business, was chosen to receive the Bartley Medallion for Excellence in Church Management at the Master’s Level from the Villanova School of Business. The Bartley Medallion is awarded annually by the faculty of the school in recognition of outstanding achievement in a specific discipline. It is the highest distinction the school can bestow upon a graduating student and serves as a visible reflection of the significant contribution made by the student to the life of the school community.
Read moreGet More Out of Your Relationship With Chat GPT and AI
by Diane Streleckis -
The explosion of coverage about ChatGPT crystalizes that AI is not just the future of communication, but its present. But how can communicators develop a clear-eyed, productive relationship with the technology? Communication industry leader Shel Holtz shared some ideas in advance of his virtual IABC Philadelphia session How to Make AI Your Friend and Improve Communications on Tuesday, April 25 at noon.
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by Diane Strelekis - Whether you’re just starting out or deep in your career, navigating the job-search process these days is a daunting task. Layoffs are rising while candidate-screening software complicates getting your application in front of a hiring manager. Executive career coach Ed Samuel, founder of SamNova, Inc. shares five of his top ways to get the role that’s right for you, not just the role available right now.
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