by Terry Haycock, PenPoints Editor and Marlene Cook, IWPA Historian
Why Not?. . .A Profile of IWPA's 2004 Communications Award Winner:
Cecilia Green
by Terry Haycock, PenPoints Editor and Marlene Cook, IWPA
Historian
I met Cecilia two years ago at my first IWPA meeting. She offered a warm, pleasant greeting and introduced me to several other members. At lunch, we discussed professional activities, as well as how the Chicago Athletic Association has the best coffee in Chicago. Complimenting IWPA on the luncheon, I found that, among other things she does for IWPA, Cecilia plans the menus. Later, when I joined the board, I would often hear, "Let's ask Cecilia" or "Cecilia would know." I wondered just who is Cecilia Green?
Our 2004 Communicator of the Year Award winner, a past president of IWPA, serves as director of public relations at the Turnaround Management Association in Chicago, where she created the first public relations department in its 15-year history. Her boss, Linda M. Delgadillo, CAE, says, "Through media relations, Cecilia has (working as a one-staff department) contributed enormously to the association's growth. Membership in TMA has increased from 3,800 in late 2000 to almost 6,800 at the end of 2003."
Cecilia's passion seems to be to create something that didn't exist before. Her professional efforts have led to increased memberships, an award-winning 50th anniversary history book of the Society of Actuaries and new public relations departments. She co-founded the Suburban Chicagoland Public Relations Society in America Chapter in 1994 and in 2002, she established "Arts in Bartlett" to celebrate the arts and personal creativity of community members and was elected its first president. In August 2003, her artistic vision became Bartlett's first annual cultural event, "The SummerFest Art Fair." Bartlett's mayor, Catherine J. Melchert, says that, "Cecilia is a communicator by profession and a lover of the cultural arts by choice." She won the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award from the Illinois Humanities Council in 2002 for these efforts.
Cecilia hails from Wichita, Kansas, where she was active in the Wichita Press Women, serving as president and other board positions. She sat on the first boards of Shakespeare in the Park and Opera Kansas, the first professional opera company in the state, and was publicity chair for the Wichita Symphony Show House. Bringing that energy and enthusiasm to Illinois, her activities in IWPA include service as president, membership director, and treasurer.
A woman of vision, Cecilia makes things happen. She was a single mother of three when she set out to obtain a degree in journalism with an emphasis on advertising and public relations. She graduated from Wichita State University with honors in 1984, fulfilling a reporting internship at a local business journal and the campus newspaper. She earned accreditation by the Public Relations Society of America in 1988 and became a Certified Association Executive from the American Society of Association Executives in 1989. She is NFPW's co-director of marketing, having served two previous years as its public relations and media director.
Cecilia has three grown children and lives with her husband Darrell in Bartlett. Whether you encounter her at a committee meeting, across the luncheon table, or battling rain at the Printers Row Book Fair, she is a delight and an inspiration. Why not join us at the September 18 luncheon meeting and see for yourself?