Charla Jeannine Batey

My career in public relations and marketing spans 19 years across multiple industries. After graduating from UC Irvine with a bachelor's degree in journalism, I started in grad school for journalism but decided to take a different path. I began working in nonprofit programs and marketing, and also worked for a children's book illustrator doing PR and general assistant work. From there, I continued working mainly in PR, marketing, and special events across different sectors including nonprofit, higher education, agency work, financial services, and now technology and telecom where I've been for over 7 years. My days are never typical in PR - anything can come up. I spend a lot of time monitoring the media and our brand, writing communications for the brand or executives, managing social media, distributing press releases and media advisories, and attending meetings to learn what's happening within the company. I work with boundary partners and different divisions to understand product and service updates, conduct interviews to fuel communications, attend events as needed, and help teams craft communications. It's very fast-paced and never slow. One of my most notable achievements was at UCI, where I was the first person to hold my role. I built that department from the ground up and developed the strategy for the team during the university's 50th anniversary, which was a milestone year. I later earned my MBA with a marketing emphasis and received my accreditation from the Public Relations Society of America.