Good Publicity: PR grad transitioned from Algonquin job to federal government

Posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2018

In 2002, Andrew McKelvey went from being a full-time Algonquin student to being a full-time public relations professional without having to change his morning commute.

“Most people go out and pound the pavement (to find work), but I just had to walk up to the fifth floor of C Building,” says McKelvey, who had a job waiting for him in the College’s communications department after his graduation from Algonquin’s two-year diploma program in Public Relations.

McKelvey says he had been working towards that job from his first day of classes at Algonquin, which he entered as a mature student following a university degree and a career in retail.

“In my first spare period, I walked right up to the (communications offices) and said, ‘hey I’m a student here, brand-new. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can lick envelopes for you, make copies — free help.’ And they were all over it,” he says.

“I tried to make myself indispensable. I showed up whenever I could to do whatever I could in a real PR office, and, luckily for me, they kept me around.”

McKelvey, now a senior communications advisor in the media relations office of the Department of National Defence, worked at the college for six years. In some ways, it was an extension of the learning he had begun as a student.

The diploma program “basically set me up for success,” he says. “I owe everything I have now with my current government job to that decision to come to (Algonquin). We were learning from professionals who were out there in the world doing (public relations) and then coming in to teach us.”

The program taught him skills he continues to use every day, he says, including how to write effectively, the importance of clear, correct, and concise information, and, most important, how to build relationships.

“Relationships in public relations are key. In any job, building relationships are important, but especially in PR. There are the (relationships) you make in college with your fellow classmates, with your professors, and when you get out there in the world, with the people you work for, you work with, or your clients.”

On the job at Algonquin, he was still learning, he says, sometimes from his own mistakes — like the time he sent out an invitation to a media briefing dated several years in the future. He got a call from CTV Ottawa’s legendary news anchor Max Keeping, asking, “Andrew, do I need a time machine to go your event?”

Winning a competition to work for the Department of National Defence in 2008 was “like being drafted by the Montreal Canadians,” says McKelvey.

“I was nervous. The college set me up for success, but going to DND, which is one of the biggest (government) departments in the country (with) one of the biggest and busiest media relations offices in the government, that was a lot.

“Luckily, my education and my time here at the college, had set me up for that. I had cut my teeth, made my mistakes, and learned how to think on my feet.

“I don’t think a day goes by without a major media outlet running a major front-page story about what the (the defence department) does. And that puts a lot of focus on public relations and media relations.

“It’s a department full of people who are totally switched on. We don’t have to dig far to find exactly what any journalist’s question is about.”

McKelvey cherishes fond memories of his time as a student at Algonquin, from the friendships he forged to the fund-raising events he helped plan as part of his course work. But the memory that stands above all others is graduation.

“Walking across the stage and getting my diploma from then-president Robert Gillett, I was very proud of myself. I was proud of the BA I had from university, but this (diploma) I felt especially proud of, because I knew that I was being set up for success.”


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