Familiar face takes on new role in administration
By Carlos Toro
marketing. She has served in the interim role since February.
Rider underwent some changes in the administration this past summer, including naming Kristine Brown as the school’s new assistant vice president for university communications and marketing.
As part of her new role, which Brown has had since early July, she is excited to start working with the students now that classes have begun.
“I love it,” Brown said. “It’s been great and really fun, and I can’t wait for the semester to really get underway and get going with all of the good stuff this campus has to offer.”
Brown said that she has been in the position on a full-time basis for approximately two months, but since February, she has been in the position on an interim basis. Once the search for candidates to fill that position was complete, Brown said that she had to go through the proper steps just like everyone else who applied. She said that she felt blessed being selected for the job.
“It was a full interview process,” Brown said. “I had to apply, just like any other candidate, and go through the interview process, which I guess took a couple of months. I interviewed with many other people on campus, both in larger group settings and individual interviews with many other people. It was not a foregone conclusion that I would be selected from the beginning.”
The job comes with various responsibilities and duties. She said that while she does not report directly to President Gregory Dell’Omo, she is in communication with him almost on a daily basis on a variety of topics and projects. She says that she reports to Vice President of University Advancement Jonathan Meer.
“So we serve a variety of different functions,” Brown said. “We handle all the external and internal communications for the university. We do a lot of publications, a lot of graphic design work. For example, we help student affairs with all of their posters and flyers and different things that they’re doing. We help the Rebovich Institute promote their events and what they’re doing. We manage our website, which is the News at Rider. We handle media relations, which is more like traditional public relations. If a newspaper is working on a story on-campus, we are the liaison. We also are responsible for the alumni magazine. We do other things like the honor roll of donors for alumni, fundraising and responsible for social media for the university, so stuff like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram come out of this office.”
Brown came to Rider in September of 2013 to help handle the public relations aspect of the school administration, which included writing press releases, dealing with the media and working in social media among other roles.
In terms of who is going to fill her previous role, Brown said that she will handle most of the duties while the rest will be divided up among the staff. She said that there won’t be someone to fill the exact role that she had.
Brown said that she spent years doing public relations for hospitals, for the state government and said that in her two decades in this line of work, she has not worked with a better staff than the one she currently works with.
“I may be head of the department and that comes with responsibilities for the management of this office, but we really have an incredible team,” Brown said. “I have never worked with such talented and creative people. They make this job really enjoyable to work in every single day. They have great ideas, they’re innovative, they’re creative and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with. They make everything we do better and stronger.”
