Say hello to our new(ish) marketing coordinator, Christie Atkins!

You may have noticed our OpenRoad and ThoughtFarmer blogs have seen a lot of contributions from a new author... meet Christie Atkins. As our marketing coordinator, Christie is responsible for brand communications, including blogging, website content, email marketing, sales collateral, and social media. She is also the friendly face of OpenRoad at our events, and herds cats to get all our award entries submitted on time.

Christie Atkins
Christie learning what it takes to be a power line maintainer for a lines appreciation event.

Christie joins us as a new graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from Simon Fraser University. We're big fans of SFU grads around here, both Gordon Ross and Jacqueline Antalik are also alumni of the communications program. She also completed two co-op semesters at Hydro One, one of Ontario's major electricity providers, where she worked on their corporate communications team and was responsible for managing mobile app content, handling social media inquiries, and publishing a lot of their corporate intranet content.

One of the great things about being a writer is during the process of researching your subject, you get to experience the world through other peoples' eyes.
 At Hydro One, Christie got a crash course in power line maintenance, including climbing a power pole (pictured right), scaling a transmission tower, and riding in a bucket truck.

This day-in-the-life adventure helped her to craft stories about everything from projects being completed by forestry services, to ones that profiled the roles of the company's top thirty employees of the year. Not only was this the "most fun day at work ever," Christie also learned about the power of storytelling for both internal and external communications—from engaging your employees to building your brand.

Please join me in welcoming Christie to the OpenRoad team!