Geneviève Tilden

Biography

Carleton Degrees:

• Master of Arts in Communication from the School of Journalism and Communication
• Bachelor of Arts Highest Honours in Mass Communications from the School of Journalism and Communication.
  • Minor in Canadian Studies
  • Minor in French

Job Title and Organization: Communications Officer at Statistics Canada in the Strategic communications and Stakeholder Relations Division, Corporate Communications

Length of time in this role: February 2019 to present

On the Job: I help advise Canada’s leading statistical experts on how to “explain the data to the people”. As part of the Corporate Communications team, I work with various teams across the agency such as media relations, social, new media and outreach, as well as subject matter experts to support the release and promotion of new data, analyses, research and tools. The subjects vary everyday but provide valuable insights on matters affecting the everyday lives of all Canadians. This role requires the valuable skill of explaining very technical and complex things in plain language, for a wide variety of audiences.

On a regular day I develop communication products such as communication plans, media lines, flyers, infographics, web announcements and stakeholder correspondence for files such as housing, national economic accounts and all sorts of special essential surveys. I also work on speeches for the Chief Statistician and StatCan spokespersons, which is a fun but very challenging task.

More About Me: I have had a very indirect path to my current role and have had the opportunity to apply my communicator skills in many varied positions mostly in the private sector before recently joining the federal workforce. Most notably I worked in high-tech at SurveyMonkey, a Silicon Valley software company that’s grown to be the largest survey distributor in the word. And I worked in law helping to manage the settlement and adjudication of multi-million dollar class action settlements.

Fun Facts: In grad school a took an odd side-job answering the phone for 3 months. This turned into 4 years as the right-hand woman helping to run a small, specialized law firm, and the most formative experience of my career!