Aaron Brown, 09/14/26

For our first meeting this fall semester, we welcomed back an alum, Aaron Brown. Aaron, once the president of our Scripps PRSSA chapter, is now the Director of Corporate Communications at Worthington Enterprises. To start off this year’s speaker series, he used a blank whiteboard to walk us through his presentation. 

Aaron asked us to shout out reasons why we chose to attend Ohio University and wrote them on the whiteboard. After that, he asked what sources of information mattered to us the most when we learned about Ohio University. By doing this exercise, he taught us about the importance of emotion and influence in decision-making and communication. 

Here are some key takeaways from Aaron’s captivating presentation:

• “The lynchpin of communication is emotion” – Aaron shares that the most successful and useful part of communication is emotion. When you remove emotion, the structure of successful communication fails.
• “Look for the influences out in the world” – Aaron tells us to look out for our influences because just like us, someone had to start with a blank piece of paper to create things to influence the world. 
• “Understand the topic” – Aaron taught us to understand our topic, to deeply know about it and to know what influences it. Before developing communication, you have to know what you’re talking about.
• “How do you become emotional?” – Aaron answered, “You look at the things that our products enable, you become emotional about the product and you find a way to love it”
• “It is not about the tag, it is about the experience” – Your job as communicators is to equip every influencer with the right messages to carry your story forward.
• “Relentlessly listen to your audience” – Aaron tells us to empathize with your audience. Know who and what can influence their emotions. Write to their emotions, because that is how we make decisions. 
• “Priorities of the future” – Every year at the end of his presentation, Aaron challenges us to think about our own priorities in future jobs. Aaron gave us a hypothetical budget of 100 eggs and instructed us to split the budget among nine categories. He encouraged us to do this exercise individually as well to help us figure out what we want. Our results are as follows:
  • Compensation- 25
  • Location- 15
  • Reputation- 10
  • Culture- 10
  • Industry-10
  • Benefits- 10
  • Supervisor-10
  • Opportunities- 10
  • Other – 0

At the end of his presentation, Aaron encouraged us to think critically about ourselves. “Become emotional about you. Know who influences you. Know who you surround yourself with.” He finished by telling us to be in awe of others’ emotions, but care deeply about your own. 

Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn here.