Announcements:
- Next week: The Mel Helitzer Lecture on Public Relations presents Brett Pulley, EVP at Weber Shandwick, Seigfred Hall 519 @ 6 p.m.
- The Athens Conservancy, an 1804 account, is having a Dad’s Weekend Hike Saturday, November 4 @ 10 a.m.
- Mentor/Mentee Reveal is happening Wednesday, November 8 @ 6 p.m. at Sadie and Alyssa’s, who live above Donkey Coffee. There will be a group walk to their apartment for those who need help getting there.
- Our annual Thanksgiving Dinner will be held November 13 @ 6 p.m. at River Gate 325
- Scripps Kid Swag! Purchase “Scripps Kid” clothing until November 13! Link
- Member Spotlight: Give a round of applause to the Bateman Team! Maura Anderson, Jacob Sherer, Jess Rutkowski, Cade Fleming, and Samantha Morsink
Speaker:
- Rob Corradi, Managing Associate at CLS Strategies
- No live tweeting due to confidentiality.
Key Takeaways:
- Always take a look at what a company does before going into a meeting.
- Rob received his undergrad and grad degrees in History. He had a professor recommend him for a fellowship with the Clinton Foundation, in which he wrote for President Bill Clinton. After that experience, he realized he wanted to become a speech writer.
- Three tracks to working in political communications:
- 1: Working on an election: Fairly easy to get involved with an election because they need people, especially people who are willing to work for free. If you stick around, though, and produce good work, they may start paying you to keep you on board with them. If this is the path you’d like to take, the best thing you can do is to just reach out and introduce yourself. According to Rob, campaign people are bad at saying no.
- 2: Working in an official office: You can either work in your state governor’s office, or one of your state senator’s offices, or shoot for the stars and try to work on The Hill in Washington D.C. There are websites completely dedicated to posting about jobs on The Hill.
- 3: Work for a firm: There are three options here. You can either work for a public affairs consulting firm (which is what Rob does today), work for a campaign consulting firm, or work at a traditional PR firm. Rob describes his job at CLS Strategies as “solving problems,” which deals with crisis control, litigation PR, and reputation management.
- Rob’s job as a speech writer was taking jargon and breaking it down for the everyday person to easily consume.
- As someone working in the field of PR, you must be ready to face digital PR challenges head on, such as geo-targeting, but also relying on traditional PR methods such as op-eds and media relations.
- Unfortunately, Rob did not meet President Obama when he worked for his administration, but he did meet President Clinton.
This meeting recap was brought to you by Sara Defibaugh, our VP of Finance. Follow her on Twitter @saradefibaugh.