Victoria Bowers, MCIPR, Communications Strategist

Hi, thank you for stopping by.

I am a CIPR-qualified communications strategist with a background in journalism, media relations, marketing and internal communications across the consumer, business-to-business, not-for-profit and education sectors. I combine my experience in project management and team leadership with my passion for creativity and collaboration to engage and inspire audiences. I am experienced in multimedia and multi-platform content creation, measurement and evaluation - ensuring that ethical and legal implications of communicating information are at the forefront of practice.​ 

Each role has enabled the other, helping to build my knowledge and experience to improve and expand upon project methods, principles and processes. My strong work ethic drives me to set and achieve goals, and I prioritise collaborative working to ensure positive and effective relationships with, and between, stakeholders by ensuring key individuals are kept informed and involved every step of the way.

I have planned and delivered one-to-one mentoring and group training, in person and online, to international teams and embrace new technologies, particularly when initiatives improve productivity. I take pride in planning and implementing impactful content adapted for key audiences and channels, ensuring messaging represents values and aligns with strategic goals. I am driven to continually improve efforts and achieve project and team success by combining in-depth research, effective collaboration, dynamic communication approaches and ongoing measurement.

Continual professional and personal development is important to me and I expand on this through volunteering, independent study and experimentation with new methods and approaches.

Overall, I strive to make a positive impact and thrive in a dynamic, collaborative and creative environment, delivering with energy, determination and focus. 

I spend my free time outdoors and have hiked across the Yorkshire Dales, toured Waterfall Country and embarked on mini adventures such as seeing the Atlantic Puffins on Skomer Island and the Grey Seals at Horsey Gap.

Areas of personal importance include education, healthcare and conservation.

My career journey:

Five years of live-on-the-hour early morning news bulletins as a freelance broadcast journalist following completion of my BA (Hons) journalism degree accredited by the BJTC. I was working across Herts, Beds, Bucks, Berkshire, Essex and The Midlands covering for news editors during the busy holiday seasons. Additional duties included forward-planning, setting up interviews, audio captures and editing, logging upcoming events and embargoed news items of relevance. Later I joined an online local news platform as a reporter and interviewer covering the fire service, police, health and lifestyle topics across Bedfordshire. following completion of my BA (Hons) journalism degree accredited by the BJTC. Mass takeovers happened, newsrooms merged or disappeared entirely, and freelancing became unsustainable.

Moved into the PR and communications software sector, beginning as a researcher at Cision, where I focused on media profiling and data enhancement and then later moved to PR Newswire, where I continued as a media researcher and had a taster of internal communications, company presentations and interviewing for the research department. I also carried out research on PR best practices from the journalist’s perspective to advise service teams and clients and was requested by the CEO to be part of a team of five to come up with an employee growth and development initiative. I then joined Agility PR Solutions and was promoted to Senior Media Editor, where I focused on media relations and industry analysis, making insight-led decisions for project initiatives and delivering monthly trend reports to senior management based on data analysis and industry news. This resulted in an increase in accuracy for news distributions to key journalists and media placement success for clients in the US. Additionally, continued improvements to data mapping for the media monitoring experience ensured clients could track coverage as it appeared across the country’s digital media platforms. I produced regular content for the marketing team, mentored and trained a team of over 30 analysts and produced the weekly 'Media Moves' newsletter. I grew the subscriber base to over 90,000 stakeholders across the US. The implementation of initially expensive AI solutions in an already challenged economy caused large-scale changes in the software sector that negatively impacted headcounts.

Writing Samples

Initially, as a hobby, I started an adventure as a photographer after completing a portrait photography course at the Oxford School of Photography. Through word of mouth, I grew a small client base working on image marketing projects with independent businesses such as artists, performers, therapists, dental practices and private healthcare centres. The growing trend of mobile phone content and the reliance on them for ease of use has resulted in professional photographers taking a back seat and surviving on sales of stock imagery. However, photography is an art form I continue to pursue over 8 years later, and I find capturing wildlife an ongoing, yet fun, challenge.

Photography

I embarked on a study break to complete a CIPR Specialist Diploma (Level 7) in Internal Communications and combined this with volunteering for a national NGO as part of the internal communications team. I focused on the brand programme during a time of transformational change for the charity, where I worked with the senior leadership team, project leads and stakeholders across all areas of work to communicate a programme of changes. I helped conduct the end-of-year audits that improved the internal communications strategy going forward. Additionally, I spent two weeks on a residential placement at one of their most popular nature reserves, where I experienced life in the field and I have been a judge on the annual calendar photography competition two years in a row.

In between, I worked with a regional charity as their Digital Marketing Lead, where I implemented a digital marketing strategy and revised communications plan with a focus on awareness campaigns and event coverage across digital platforms. Working with teams across the organisation, members of the community and associated partners, I curated and scheduled multimedia content across digital platforms and managed to improve social media engagement by 100% in the first quarter, obtained media coverage for a campaign surrounding young carers and built on the reputation of the Carer Friendly Tick Award.

I recently landed a contract as a communications coordinator for the University of Cambridge's Estates Division where I promoted the activities of the Estates Division where I collaborated with cross-disciplinary teams, wider University staff, partners and students to curate multimedia content for internal and external communications, and liaised with the senior leadership team to plan future communications strategies and associated content. Obtained trade media coverage for the Universal Voices project where student voices replaced AI announcements on the award-winning all-electric U Bus service.

I am only at the start of my career transition as a communications strategist and am looking forward to what the future has in store. There is so much more to learn, do and experience, and that is what motivates me. I am most intrigued by the psychological and social impact of change communications strategies to successfully align colleagues with corporate objectives - ensuring colleagues feel valued and are have the opportunity to shape the future of their organisations. I plan to complete the Prosci certification at some point, too!

SKILLS  

Strategic Communications - Internal Communications - External Communications - Communications Measurement - Content Development - Digital Media - Journalism - Newsletters - News Writing - Storytelling - Copywriting - Copy Editing - Proofreading - Public Relations - Media Relations - Publicity - Digital Marketing - Brand Alignment - Audience Behaviour Analysis - Team Mentoring - Staff Training - Auditing - Team Leadership - Digital Production - Broadcasting - Presenting - Photography - Filming - Image Editing - Video Editing - Audio Editing - Interviewing - Podcasts - Wix - WordPress - Canva - Photoshop - Lightroom - Hootsuite - Google Analytics - Intranets - Microsoft Office 365 - SharePoint - Viva Engage - - Word - Excel - PowerPoint - SEO - Websites - Trello - Media Industry Insights - Data Collation - Data Analysis - Data Storytelling - PowerBI - Research - Attention to Detail - Critical Thinking - Collaboration 

Email: contact@victoriabowers.co.uk

Location: Cambridgeshire

Connect: LinkedIn 

Follow: Instagram 

CV Victoria Bowers .pdf

Download PDF • 63KB

CIPR-Qualified.pdf

Download PDF • 192KB

PowerBI.pdf

Download PDF • 176KB

PRCertificate.pdf

Download PDF • 5KB

If you have around half an hour to spare, you will find out how I approach internal communications. I have adapted this to be a guide for others starting out in the field. Think of it as a sharing of knowledge from my experience in the communications sphere and some learnings from accompanying studies. I hope you enjoy it and get an idea of how combining creativity with the analytical mindset steers you through every stage of the internal communications process.