Allison Clair, Director of Institutional Communications at NYU Langone was Named a PRSA-NY 2018 15 Under 35 Winner

Allison Clair, Director of Institutional Communications at NYU-Langone Medical Center was interviewed by Carolina Osma, Senior Marketing Associate at D S Simon Media. They spoke about Allison’s big career break, advice she offers to people starting out and the best advice she ever received from a mentor or older colleague.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

CAROLINA: Hi I’m Carolina Osma, Senior Marking Associate at D S Simon Media and I’m here with Allison Director of Communications at NYU Langone. So she just won a 15 Under 35 Award. And congratulations on your award. So what was a key moment in your career that lead you to success?

Allison: Yeah. So I think being at the hospital during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was actually a real sort of turning point, in doing more crisis communications, and kind of being just thrown into the storm communications. All of our patients were evacuated and lots of media all over the country, if not the world we’re very interested in this story. Yes so lots of crisis control, lots of communications and it was exciting but scary.

CAROLINA: Yeah especially because so many people’s lives were on the line. And so, when you were starting out what was maybe a piece of advice that really helped you and really helped you be successful in your career?

ALLISON: Yes so a piece of advice that I got that’s really kind of took with me was to build relationships, both with the people that you work with, and then people outside of your company as well. So just to network, using that word I hate that word, but you know just to connect with people and kind of be friendly.

CAROLINA: And then what’s a piece of advice that you would give to somebody that was maybe just starting out or maybe at an internship level but they wanted to break into the PR industry?

ALLISON: Yeah. So I think with PR, it is a lot about relationship building. So I think the same advice really applies but also for people to be always reading the news, always be thinking about what area of communications they want to work in. And so I would I would say that- reading a lot.

CAROLINA: Reading a lot is super important especially just like being up to date, like knowing what’s going on in the news is so important. Thank you so much Allison for joining us and congratulations on your award.