{"id":2142,"date":"2020-06-18T05:26:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T05:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/?p=2142"},"modified":"2020-06-19T05:26:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T05:26:53","slug":"commencement-speech-2020-fiona-cassidy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/commencement-speech-2020-fiona-cassidy\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement Speech 2020 by Fiona Cassidy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u201cCommunication is key to whatever happens in the future\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second set of commencement addresses begun with a talk by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/fiona-cassidy-lprinz-apr-b289861\/\">Fiona Cassidy<\/a>, Director, FR Consulting from New Zealand.\u00a0Fiona is the first chair of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand and she is also Secretary, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalalliancepr.org\/\">Global Alliance<\/a>. It was an honour to\u00a0listen to the\u00a0Commencement Speech 2020 by Fiona Cassidy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fiona Cassidy greeted everybody with a bright smile which she wore throughout the session. She started by warmly congratulating the students on completing their program at SCoRe and went on to talk about her PR journey, some challenges faced by the industry, and how New Zealand has tackled COVID from a communications perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cassidy started her career as an army officer. \u201cWhat I learned from being a New Zealand Army Officer for almost 14 years, were skills of leadership. One of the fundamental skills to be successful in public relations is to understand leadership.\u201d\u00a0 Some lessons that she took with her from her army life into her communications career were\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You have to know your business intimately<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ability to work across barriers and develop strong relations<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ability to plan well and to execute<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negotiation skills- As an army officer she had been a part of several peacekeeping missions that were carried out successfully. It is from those missions she learnt the art and importance of having negotiation skills.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After leaving the army, Cassidy went on to become the Army Public Relations Officer. Some skills acquired from her former career which she could put to use in as a PR professional, were strategy, planning, and the ability to make complex situations simple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cTechnology has made our life faster but it does not remove the basics,\u201d she said addressing the non-negotiable requirement for a PR professional to possess basic communication skills such as good writing, prompt stakeholder engagement, and listening skills.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Establishing media relations is another integral part of the job. In order to develop strong journalist relations, understand their work deeply and then approach them. Media landscaping and scanning across various media organisation, will help get ahead of the game. She emphasised the importance of holding on to one\u2019s ethics and integrity especially as a public relations professional. She substantiated all of the aforementioned with anecdotes of campaigns she had been a part of, which led her to the next important rule \u2013 to always have a connection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a campaign, it is not important to always have the fanciest of ideas but it is essential to have a connect, in not just campaigns but everything we do. Fiona Cassidy explained this with the example of the communications campaign run by the government of New Zealand. She said that its success was owed to consistent messaging and faith in leadership. Communications in action were instrumental in New Zealand\u2019s battle against coronavirus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This pandemic will make our profession challenging as there is a stark difference in the dynamics of the industry pre and post-Covid. \u201cBut communication is key to whatever happens tomorrow,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the end, the session was opened for questions from the students and Fiona answered each of them with utmost patience and grace. Her journey from the New Zealand Army to Public Relations left every student inspired and empowered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8211;\u00a0Udita Mehta<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Related article-<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/advice-for-pr-professionals\/\">Commencement Address by Shereen Bhan<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/commencement-address-1-for-class-of-2020-by-ashish-mishra\/\">Commencement Address by Ashish Mishra<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2144 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-236x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"236\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-236x300.png 236w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-768x975.png 768w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-115x146.png 115w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-39x50.png 39w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-59x75.png 59w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta.png 789w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 236px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 236\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2144\" src=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-236x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"236\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-236x300.png 236w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-768x975.png 768w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-115x146.png 115w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-39x50.png 39w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta-59x75.png 59w, https:\/\/scoreindia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Udita-Mehta.png 789w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px\" \/><\/noscript><\/p>\n<p><strong>Udita Mehta<\/strong> is a part of Class of 2020 of PG Programme in PR and Corporate Communications at SCoRe, Mumbai. She completed her winter internship with Avian WE<\/p>\n<p>Udita pursued her B.A in Journalism from MOP Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai. She is an ardent storydweller and a budding storyteller. Public Relations to her is a people-centric business and she enjoys being on a mass communication front. She is an avid reader, a film buff, a foodie, and a chai lover. She is passionate about environmental issues, especially water conservation.<\/p>\n<p>She can be reached on Twitter as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mehta_udi\">@mehta_udi<\/a>\u00a0and on LinkedIn as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/udita-mehta-a82422136\/\">Udita Mehta<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Commencement Speech 2020 by Fiona Cassidy - at SCoRe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Commencement Speech 2020 by Fiona Cassidy at SCoRe. 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