Highest Professional PR Accreditation for Black Vanilla’s Director
Nichole leads Black Vanilla’s public relations team and has 25 years of experience in PR strategy development and campaign implementation in a wide range of sectors including health, finance and consumer goods.
She is also a member of the CIPR Channel Islands committee and is now one of approximately 220 Chartered PR practitioners in the UK.
Nichole has worked in Sydney, for brands such as Casio and Bausch & Lomb, and in London where she worked for Hill & Knowlton and in-house before setting up her own agency. Six years ago she moved to Guernsey.
Highest Accreditation
Chartered status is the highest accreditation in professional public relations practice.
As well as reflecting the practitioner’s breadth of experience, understanding and achievements, it demonstrates a commitment to ongoing professional development in a fast-moving profession.
Emma Leech Found.Chart.PR, FCIPR, DipCIPR led a team of expert assessors evaluating candidates’ knowledge and competencies in ethics, strategy and leadership.
Phil Morgan, the CIPR Deputy Chief Executive, also attended the day which was held at Birmingham City University.
Nichole’s Response
‘The assessment day was rigorous and demanding; it shone a spotlight on PR as a strategic management function and we had some stimulating discussions around ethics, strategy and leadership.
‘Our conversations around ethics were particularly challenging. This session was led by Ella Minty who is an ethics and reputation management specialist; her probing questions left us all doubting our ability to navigate the moral maze. Ethics is an incredibly important area for personal development and for our profession, so we all felt under extra pressure in this session and it is a subject that I will be looking to explore further.
‘The format of the day is discussion based and that offered an opportunity to learn from my fellow candidates. Those people included some very experienced in-house communicators who had in-depth experience of internal communications; I felt very humbled to be part of the group.
‘Black Vanilla is a big believer in collaboration and while the local Channel Islands CIPR group is active, it’s still rare to have the chance to learn from our peers, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet people from different sectors and specialisms. It highlighted the talent and knowledge we have in our industry.
‘There are over 10,000 CIPR members and approximately 220 Chartered practitioners, I am proud to say that Jersey and Guernsey are well represented on the Chartered list.
‘It goes without saying that I am delighted to achieve Chartered status, but this accomplishment has also highlighted the need for continual learning. We all had to prepare a CPD plan for the day, which was reviewed by our peers, but I am also looking at additional opportunities to deepen my knowledge.
‘The accreditation process is an essential step to ensure PR practitioners’ expertise and impact is recognised and I am very proud to be named a Chartered PR Practitioner.'[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]