I’m Francis Okezie. I am a 20-year-old student enrolled at the University of Waterloo, majoring in Communication Arts and Design Practice Studies, disciplined in persuasion and communicative strategies on digital media. I'm passionate about social media because of its effectiveness in connecting people, and I'm instinctively social. My professional aspirations are invested in sociability. I enjoy connecting and building great relationships with people from various backgrounds, and I excel at executing social media campaigns regardless of the target population because it isn’t what you say—It’s how you say. I have been honoured to work with Imani Dominique, a curator, visual artist and entrepreneur in the city of Toronto. BlackPOP and The Gift Shop, this experience strengthened my social engagement skills and also gave me the platform to network with Local visual artists, photographers, musicians, poets and other creatives in the industry. My independent work of djing, writing, and modelling has exercised my ability to think outside the box and creatively conceptualizing new methods of engagement.
I’ve immersed myself in multiple different projects to discover emerging talent and also phenomenologically gain inspiration and awareness of Toronto’s culture. I’ve dabbled in film, sound, music, website curation, and print media and embraced other forms of tangible engagement. Experimenting with all of these formats, I learned the connective power of storytelling that reflexively mirrors the lived experience of people; audiences and clients are persuaded by communication that reflects their ideas and the times we live in. Cultural fixations evolve and continuously reshape how we engage with various forms of media, in order to excel in PR, you need to be malleable to ‘now’ by staying on top of trends.
What is my mission?
My knowledge of ‘now’ is sharp and concise to the social atmosphere we all live under. I have a keen interest in of the current social sphere, and the roles trends play in shaping and evolving social networks. As a PR intern, I aim to work with cultural signifiers— symbols, behaviours, or ideas that hold significant meaning within a culture and resonate with the public. By understanding these signifiers, I want to craft ideas, messages and campaigns that can persuasively influence public perception and behaviour.