Public relations with news judgement, and events built to make it.
Public relations, media training, and hosting in Ottawa and across Canada
Victoria Williston helps organizations get noticed for the right reasons. She spent a decade deciding what was news and then years being the story on behalf of a district, so she knows what earns coverage and what merely fills a room. She handles the positioning, the media, and the stakeholders, builds the events that carry the story, trains the people who will face the cameras, and can host the room herself. She leads every engagement herself and brings in trusted specialists as each project needs them. She works with private companies and professional firms, nonprofits and associations, cultural organizations, and the public-sector and district organizations where she built her track record. The work is the same in each: move from plan to execution.
- Strategy
- Partners
- Place
- Program
- Story
- Delivery
Public relations and events that make news
Get noticed by the people who matter, for the right reasons.
Positioning and messaging, media strategy and outreach, press materials, interview preparation, stakeholder and government communications, issues support when something is contested, and the storytelling that keeps an announcement alive after it lands. Victoria has done this from both sides: a decade deciding what was news, then years as the public voice of an organization on its best days and its hardest. More on public relations.
Events sit inside this work, not beside it. A launch, an announcement, an opening, a milestone, or a reception where the right people meet is the strongest public relations tool an organization has, when the story, the guest list, and the coverage are designed together. Victoria plans and produces those moments from concept and approvals through run-of-show and follow-up.
Media training
A six-hour course for the people who will be the face of the story.
Most interviews are lost before they start, in the preparation nobody did. Victoria trains executives, spokespeople, board chairs, and subject experts to walk into an interview knowing what they want to say and how to get back to it when the questions go elsewhere. She has done this from both sides: years as a reporter and anchor asking the questions, and then as an organization's spokesperson answering them, in scrums, on live television, and on contested issues.
Media training is delivered as a one-day course of about six hours, for a single spokesperson or a small group, built around your organization and the interviews you are likely to face. The day covers:
- How newsrooms work: what reporters need, deadlines, and how a story gets shaped
- Key messages: the two or three things the audience must remember
- Formats and technique: television, radio, print, and podcasts; staying on message; presence on camera
- Difficult and crisis interviews: hostile questions, scrums, and press conferences
- On-camera practice: mock interviews with playback and honest critique
Most of the day is practical: participants leave having done several on-camera interviews and watched themselves back, not just heard the theory. The course is quoted as a flat fee, and is delivered in English.
Hosting and moderation
The right voice behind the microphone sets the tone.
Moderating conference panels and industry discussions, hosting galas and awards nights, MCing corporate receptions and anniversaries, interviewing executives and public figures on stage, and hosting community and civic events. Need someone else behind the microphone? Victoria can source and brief an experienced host suited to your audience. More on hosting.
And the rest of it
Placemaking, public-space activation, stakeholder engagement and municipal coordination are not services on this page, but they are the experience behind it. When an event touches a public space, a community, or City Hall, that background is what makes the difference between an event that happens and one that works. See the work.
Where does she work?
Victoria is based in Ottawa and works across Canada. Most engagements are in the National Capital Region, and she travels for panels, galas, and projects elsewhere; travel is scoped into the proposal.
How does working with Victoria work, and what does it cost?
Engagements take one of three shapes: a project with a defined scope and fee; a monthly retainer for ongoing public relations; or a fractional role, a set number of days a month embedded with an organization that has senior work but not a senior post. Hosting, moderation, and the six-hour media training course are each quoted as a flat fee. Where a project needs specialists, they are brought in at cost and named in the proposal.
Within retainers and fractional roles, Victoria also writes what organizations need and rarely have capacity for: policies, procedures, and operational manuals; governance documents; grant and funding applications; and strategic plans. She has built these from scratch at every stop in her career, including a $2.25 million events funding application she co-authored.
The first conversation is free, and it is about what you are trying to make happen, not about a menu.
Working on something?
Tell Victoria what you are trying to make happen.