Not lost, just undiscovered.

As part of my PR Writing 1: Writing to Inform class last semester, I had the opportunity to meet and interview a graduate of the Corporate Communications and Public Relations program at Centennial College. I wrote the following feature article based on that interview and it is now also posted on the The Word: the CC+PR program’s blog.

by Uma Chandran, Class of 2009

When Sabita Singh starts work each morning at Sun Life Financial, she feels a great sense of pride.  As the director of digital communications, Singh leads the company’s global digital communications strategy – a rare role for a Toronto-based communicator.

“It’s exciting to have the ability to shape the digital footprint of an international company,” she says.  “I’m proud of my work because it has a global impact on our web presence in the US, the UK, Asia and other regions around the world.”

Singh, an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC), graduated from the Corporate Communications program at Centennial College in 1989.  She entered the PR field through her internship and, since then, has worked in many different sectors including real estate, pharmaceutical, high tech and financial services.

Singh spent more than 10 years doing internal communications in various roles, including three years as a manager at Sprint Canada.  It was there that she first had experience with digital communications, managing the company’s intranet site, and quickly realized that she had found her niche.

“Digital communications is great because it’s always changing; it’s easy to measure and it’s never boring, especially with the introduction of social media which is revolutionizing the way we communicate.”

With her new interest in digital communications, Singh took her expertise to AstraZeneca Canada, iStudio and to her current position at Sun Life Financial.

“I’m always thinking about what I want to do next,” Singh says.

Singh’s determination and initiative have been recognized by her peers numerous times through awards including an IABC Ovation Award, a CPRS Creative Excellence Award and an IABC Gold Quill Award. An award-winning project she is most proud of is the redesign sunlife.com in 2008.

Using the strategic planning tools that she learned years ago at Centennial College, Singh led the transformation of the company’s international website. The website is now user friendly, incorporates social media and, because of improved search engine optimization, now ranks higher in search engines like Google.

“In one year, we’ve come so far in the digital world. It’s exciting to be a part of a company that recognizes the importance of the web in communicating with its customers, employees and other diverse audiences. We’re moving from behind the times to leading the way in a short period of time.”

Singh attributes her impressive successes to her strong will and hard work. However, she also enthusiastically credits the Corporate Communications program for teaching her all the right skills.

“Everything I learned at Centennial, I’ve used in the workforce. It’s all practical – writing, editing, graphic design, strategy… I really do credit my success to Centennial,” she says. “I have a lot of respect for the program. It’s a great starting point for the field.”

I’ve decided that it may be better to write about anything and everything until I find what my blogging voice is.  So while I may talk about technology, social media and PR, I will also talk about anything else that catches my attention.

Such as the post that I wrote two weeks ago (now posted below) on skating at the Harbourfront Centre.

Hopefully this will help avoid blogging dry spells…

Over the past few months I’ve been looking to review my grammar, punctuation, and overall writing skills. I’ve learned many things in school before but it’s easy to forget some. I had decided that reviewing these skills a few more times would definitely help to drill them into my memory. It has been moving along slowly, but at least it’s moving!

I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss in September. It was very informative and highly amusing – at least for my easily-amused personality. I came out of it determined to beef up my hyphen and semi-colon use, as well as to reduce my ellipses use.

Now, I am currently going through When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People: How to Avoid Common Errors in English by Ann Batko.

I’ll post any other tidbits that I found helpful (as long as some from Truss’ book), but here’s one that I’m currently amazed by: The Who vs. Whom issue.

So many people pick and use the wrong word of the two. The book looks at Who is the present for? vs. Whom is the present for?

Without going into details and breaking down the sentence to talk about clauses, subjects and objects, etc. here’s a tip:

Think of how you would restate the sentence with the pronoun he/him or they/them, and if you use a form that ends in “m,” you need “whom.” For example, in this example, you’d say, Is the present for them? You wouldn’t say, Is the present for they.

So! Instead of incorrectly saying That’s the actor who Sally adores, you should be saying That’s the actor whom Sally adores. This is because Sally adores him and not he.

Right.