For the 2023-2024 school year, many new faces have entered the Riverside Brookfield High School building, including Kiley Fletcher, the new coordinator of public relations and community engagements.
The role of coordinator of public relations and community engagements is a new position for district 208. Fletcher, being the first person to fulfill this role, will run all major communications between the staff, students, parents, and others in the Riverside-Brookfield community.
“I pretty much just prepare large scale communications to all stake-holders, so students, staff, parents, community, alumni. That’s through email, Remind, social media, the website, anything you can think of communications wise,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher will gather information and attend events to share with the Riverside-Brookfield community through the “Pawsitive Pride” weekly newsletter. The newsletter will work to share events going on in the classroom, outside of the classroom, in sports, extracurricular activities, and in the school community.
“I just want to make sure everything is being portrayed in a great light and all the exciting things that are happening, people are aware of it,” Fletcher said.
During her time at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fletcher took a public relations class which inspired her to pursue it as a career. After graduating in December 2022 with a major in advertising and a minor in public relations, she was employed at Chicago advertising firm Jasculca Terman where she worked on strategic communications.
“I just love PR and being able to communicate with stakeholders and helping with brand messaging,” Fletcher said.
RB principal Dr. Hector Freytas, emphasized the importance of having someone dedicated to public relations to ensure news regarding RB can be widespread throughout the community.
“The goal is for communication of good news and for news to go out more frequently, more often, and quicker. We want to improve the timeliness of the messages, the quality of the messages, and the diversity of the messages,” Freytas said.
With her many skill sets regarding PR, social media, and writing skills, Fletcher has many qualities that made her suitable for the role of handling all of RB’s communications.
“She’s a great reader, she’s a great writer, she’s a great communicator, and she’s a great listener. She’s worked with other schools in a communication role aspect, so we value her experience,” Freytas said. “She is current with all of the social media trends, applications, and methods of communications, so we believe she has the skill set to do a good job.”
By working with teachers and administrators, Fletcher will be at the forefront of communications to better the RB community. She hopes to learn more from her new colleagues in district 208 and improve wherever possible during her first year as the coordinator of public engagements.
“I love RB. This is my first time working in a school. I honestly had no idea that this was the path I was going to take,” Fletcher said. “As a freshman in college, you have no idea what you’re going to do. Even if you think you know, you don’t always know, so I couldn’t be more grateful to be here.”
