Erin Elliott Interview

Erin Elliott-Senior Account Executive
Hiebing Agency
2000 UW-Whitewater Grad

What made you choose public relations?

Well I knew I wanted to be in PR before I even came to Whitewater, and I know that's very unusual. Most people decide when they get there, sometimes a couple years in, and that's ok. I was lucky that when I was growing up my dad worked for a TV station, just as a finance guy so certainly not on air or anything, but sometimes they do use the children of people that work there to do different things on camera, because that's cheaper than paying somebody to do it. So I kind of grew up in that world and when the time came that they wanted to do a teen reporter, I auditioned and served in that role for basically throughout high school. So I was very lucky. While most people were working at McDonald's or doing other things that most high school students do, I was a teen reporter. It gave me enough insight into that world to know that I loved it and loved working with the media. I loved writing, I loved writing my stories, I loved everything about it except I wasn't really wild about what I saw in the newsroom. I saw a lot of people coming and going I saw a lot of people really stressed out. I saw a lot of people moving around a lot and even then I thought I really like this but I don't think I want that kind of life, so what could I do that could kind of allow me to work in this world but kind of matched up with kind of like a business and I honestly did not know at the time. This is probably 1995, I never heard of public relations. It's not like you grew up thinking like, "Oh I want to be a PR girl," but I did some research and asked around and kind of talked to them about what I was thinking and just ended up with some informational interviews then with people who had, maybe it wasn't called PR, but that's the kind of things they were doing community relations or internal communications or whatever it might be and I thought that's for me. So then I started looking at different programs around the state and found Whitewater to be for me, the best fit I thought. I thought they had the best programs and some really great professors and when I came there and got involved the programs and the classes validated that yup this is the right career path and I'm going to keep going down it.

Were you involved with PRSSA while at Whitewater?

Very much so. I think I got involved from day one I really found a lot of value in being on the board. The programs were great, the committees and activities we did were good, portfolio building experiences but I really found that being on the board forced you to learn a lot of leadership, commodity, and give you great networking experiences. I remember one year that I was in charge of doing a lot of the programming and the planning. I was calling people in the real world to ask them to come and to Whitewater and talk to our group. I probably wouldn't have had a reason to call those people if I wasn't on the board for PRSSA and that really got me very smoothly transitioned once I was in the real world too. I am involved in regular PRSA, where I've now I'm actually the president elect for our chapter back home, and that too has been great professional development even better networking.

What is the best way to stand out in the PR world?

It's actually really easy. I used to think there was some really magical secret or you had to you know have a million letters behind your name, but I kept getting told that the things that people liked about what I was able to do was to do good work and have a nice personality. Actually follow through in the things you say you're going to do which isn't hard, but apparently it's not done very often in our world. So that's a great way to stand out.

What is your final piece of advice for PR students today?

It's a very good question, I would say make the most of your college experience you hear it from everybody but there's a reason for that. Join organizations, take leadership roles, document the things you're doing, work on your portfolio; enhance your portfolio with all the stuff you are doing. Just really build your portfolio up.

Special thanks to Erin Elliott and Hiebing

Video and Editing by Amanda Lalley & Kelsey Ostby

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