Feature Story: Mature Parents Offer Unique Experiences for Adopted Children This piece is a feature story I wrote

on how older Canadians that adopt internationally can benefit adopted children. I worked through each step of the process, from story idea to final story creation and formatting. The other steps involved were research on publications that have an audience interested in this topic and query letter creation. From there I researched the topic and interviewed four different people in order to uncover the facts and feelings associated with mature parent adoption. I looked into the effects on the mature parents, the adopted child, and the extended family of those adopting. In this piece I wrote with a unique angle to adoption. Many people see mature parent adoption as a negative. My intent was to change the ideas of these people and show the positives.

Speech: Rally the Troops This piece was written for a course entitled, Presentations for PR. It is a speech written to motivate and encourage the employees of a communications firm in a time of uncertainty. The background scenario was that a communications firm was shutting down one of the two locations because of financial issues and a change in one communitys economic environment. The aim of the speech is to ensure the employees at the remaining branch understand what is going on and that they hear it from the source. It also aims to encourage the remaining employees that there is great potential for growth again in the near future and that their jobs are stable. The main intent was to be open with the employees and reinforce the idea of teamwork while enduring the changes. The writing and presentation of this speech resulted in a grade of 94%.

Strategy Plan: Focus for Ethnic Women This is a piece lifted from a campaign plan four of my peers and I created together for the not-for-profit organization, Focus for Ethnic Women. This is part of an intricate plan aiming to raise the profile of this organization while increasing funds and donations. It was interesting getting to work with a not-for-profit group that works so hard for what they believe in. The organization works to provide training for immigrant and visible minority women. The end goal of the organization is to help these women ease into and contribute to the Canadian society. The plan included documents on formative research, strategy plan, action plan, and evaluation tactics. The entire plan resulted in a change of mindset for the organization and the intent to alter who and how the organization reaches out to.

Blog Post: Tailored Tweets This piece is a blog post aimed towards PR students and professionals. My intent in this piece was to write a short piece on something relevant to those interested in the field of public relations. I paired a topic that is relevant any day with timely examples to illustrate my point. During the writing process of this blog post I had to evolve my initial idea in order to dig deeper and make the blog post more relevant to those in PR. I started with the idea that novelty twitter accounts were something you and clients should avoid. Through research and talking to my peers I became aware of more issues where high profile peoples tweets get them into trouble. This is where I got the idea of tailoring tweets and ensuring the people or ideas you align with are acceptable to your audience. My research and writing efforts resulted in a grade of 90%.

Event Photo: Waterloo Siskins This photo represents the volunteer work I have begun with the Waterloo Siskins. I have recently started volunteering with the organization with a focus on making a hockey game into an event. My role is to engage the audience with trivia questions and contests to win prizes from the teams sponsors. As I gain confidence and get to know the organization my tasks will move more toward social media, news releases, continued event planning, and more.

Blog Post: A PR Pros Holiday Wish List This piece is a blog post aimed toward PR students and professionals. This blog post is a lighter piece aimed to make the audience chuckle and nod as they read. When writing this I struggled to keep it concise, but rearranged what I had to keep the word count around 300. Because of the nature of the subject, a short post that avoids rambling is important. Writing this helped me to work on knowing when to elaborate and when to keep something simple. An initial list of five wants and five realistic gift ideas was shortened to three. I made this decision because the audience I aimed for are busy people. For a humourous blog post, I decided shorter was better and would keep the attention of the reader.

Explanation of Choices When putting together a portfolio, I have learned it is important to include items you are proud of that display your diverse skills. The pieces I included are pieces I take pride in and am confident in. This confidence has come from exceptional grades or a passion I feel within, related to the project. My portfolio has pieces unique from each other in format and in style. The Strategy Plan: Focus for Ethnic Women portion displays my ability to write professional business documents. Since it is something that was done in a group with my peers, it shows that I can work with others to create concise documents with high-level thinking. The ability to yield great results in a team setting is something employers want to see and something that is necessary in the field of public relations. The Feature Story: Mature Parents Offer Unique Experiences for Adopted Children is an opportunity to show my research and interview skills weaved into creative writing. I included two blog posts in my portfolio to show my ability to write for the web. The types of writing in the blog posts differ. Although both are informal, one is more humour based. Including both of these shows that I can write about a fact and event based topic with real-life examples and can take an extremely creative route. The Speech: Rally the Troops piece was included to show that I can write to motivate others. It displays a more poetic type of writing that paints a picture and uses analogies. The document includes pauses and uses italics to emphasize certain words. This shows that I can not only write speeches, but also have knowledge on the delivery of them. This assignment has allowed me to see where the gaps are in my portfolio. With my upcoming volunteer work with the Waterloo Siskins, I will be able to make many new additions. I look forward to developing my skills and creating media releases. I will also be gaining experience in constructing social media posts for an organization. Another gap that will be filled within the next few months is the event planning aspect. As I work with the Siskins I will collect photos to show my involvement and how vocal I am on game days. I am confident that my portfolio will be enhanced greatly within the next couple months and that the current gaps will be filled. I look forward to diversifying the types of pieces in my portfolio in order to get better results.