King's Communications Manager wins IABC Award of Merit

Congratulations to Jane Antoniak MCM, APR, King’s Manager of Communications and Media Relations, who won a 2020 International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) London Virtuoso Award of Merit for communications research.

As part of her submission, a research project on Canadian university presidents as social media communicators which stemmed from her Master’s research at McMaster University, Antoniak completed a national, bilingual survey of Directors of Communications; conducted in-depth interviews of Canadian university presidents/principals from coast to coast, and also conducted content analysis of social media posts.

Antoniak has presented her research and further work into leadership communications at multiple conferences across Canada. Most recently, she and her supervisor, Dr. Alexandre Sevigny, McMaster University, presented at the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) national conference, Transformation 2.0: The CEO as a Digital Communicator: Communications Strategies to Protect and Enhance Your Brand and the Leader on the risks and rewards of digital leadership communications.

At the conference, Antoniak was also one of 19 people from across Canada who received the professional designation, Accredited in Public Relations (APR) from the CPRS. She is a member of CPRS Hamilton as well as IABC London.

Antoniak now applies that research to her work at King’s where she develops strategic approaches to digital communications. As well, she is a graduate Teaching Assistant at McMaster University in a Master’s course, Leadership, Persuasion and the Successful Executive. She also is a part-time instructor of Strategic Public Relations in the post-graduate diploma program at Fanshawe College.

“King’s benefits enormously from Jane’s professional experience and expertise.  Her post-grad research has also brought King’s into the national limelight and her community contributions to education, communications and media and are outstanding,” says Marilyn Mason, Vice-Principal, Enrolment Services and Strategic Partnerships.

Presented every year by IABC London, the Virtuoso Awards are Southwestern Ontario’s premiere professional awards celebrating excellence in communications and the best in creative strategy and design. Since the program’s launch in 1995, Virtuoso has revealed local communications, marketing, and creative professionals as ‘ones to watch.’ The full list of winners, including the former King’s interns can be found at https://twitter.com/iabclondon or https://www.instagram.com/iabclondon/.

Antoniak was very proud to see four former Communications interns: Lourdes Hurtado, and King’s alumni Kylie Castle ’19, Aysenur Kurt ’19 and Zirda Kikki ’17 of Fanshawe College’s post-graduate certificate in Public Relations and Corporate Communications receive acclaim for the work they did on the 2020 Bell Let’s Talk campaign at King’s.

The IABC awards will be presented virtually on September 17, 2020. Congratulations to all the winners.