About

I have known Cecelia for more than 10 years in a professional capacity and had the opportunity to work with her being a client and in recent years being on the same team working at Crime Stoppers. Cecelia is incredibly dedicated to her tasks and believes wholeheartedly in what she’s doing whether it’s for commercial interests or for purpose/ social impact. She has an incredibly positive disposition and never short of energy.  Having her on my team especially over the last 18 months during Covid has been invaluable.

Cecelia Haddad’s expertise in communicating during the various stages of a critical incident are evident. With her guidance and training we have not only developed a robust communication plan but have the skills and confidence to implement it should a critical incident occur.

I attended the Crisis Management Workshop run by Cecelia Haddad and Judy Goldman for ADAPE. Not long after the workshop a walkway collapsed at my school in Sydney, and 16 Year 7 boys were injured. The news crews were all over the school, with virtually instantaneous reports and images going live across the internet, radio, and television. The Crisis Management workshop provided me with all the tools to assist me to work through the issue of dealing with the media and managing the coverage as best as possible. Not only this, but the workshop equipped me with the skills to turn the story into one that highlighted the heroics of the students and staff involved rather than focusing on the damage and injuries. Today, this has been the main focus of the coverage across the media. I can’t recommend the course highly enough…hopefully you will never need to use the skills that you will learn. However, as I found out yesterday, if you ever have a crisis on your campus, you will have the PR management expertise to cope with the situation.

I have built a long and trusted professional relationship with the Marketing Elements team for well over a decade. Most recently this year, Cecelia facilitated communications workshops for me with NSW Health Pathology’s senior leadership teams, to empower them in consistently communicating about a major state-wide ICT transformation program. While I was Senior Manager, Media Relations at UTS, Cecelia supported my team with strategic communications to widely publicise completion of key phases of the University’s $1.2 billion City Campus masterplan. This included the high-profile launch of Australia’s one and only Frank Gehry-designed building in 2015. Coaching the University’s senior leadership in media interview skills was an essential part of major building launches, which received a great deal of media attention and phenomenally positive media coverage. However long before this Cecelia and her former business partner regularly delivered media skills training to senior academics, deans and our university executives to ensure they were prepared for anything the media threw at them – positive or contentious. I learned a great deal myself along the way and applied it in my work ever since. I am always looking for opportunities to work with Marketing Elements. When you find a good thing, you stick with it, and I can’t recommend them enough.