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Cathleen Johnson to deliver annual Albert Walker Lecture

October 23, 2015
Cathleen Johnson

Cathleen Johnson

The NIU Department of Communication and the NIU Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) welcome students to the annual Albert Walker Lecture, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27, in the Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center.

Free and open to the public, the lecture is of special interest to anyone interested in careers in public relations and communications.

Speaker Cathleen Johnson – NIU alumna, president of Cathleen Johnson Tourism Consultants and managing director of Percepture Travel – will talk on “A Career in Travel and Tourism: Marketing and Communications.”

Johnson created the travel and hospitality practice at Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, and throughout career of more than 25 years there, grew the specialty area to the No. 1 tourism practice among independent PR agencies. She has developed marketing campaigns for countries including the United States, Mexico and Brazil, the states of Illinois and Hawaii, and for a wide variety of airlines, hotels, tour and transportation companies and associations.

NIU’s Albert Walker Dinner and Lecture honors the life of the former professor, who created the public relations sequence at the NIU in 1968.

After developing a close relationship with the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Walker created NIU’s PRSSA chapter with Betsy Plank, considered the “godmother” of PRSSA. Over the next 25 years, Walker grew the Betsy Plank chapter, winning numerous awards. Years later, he received The Outstanding Educator Award, PRSA’s highest accolade, in recognition of the chapter’s success and for his dedication to public relations education.

For more information, call (815)-753-1456 or email pietrowski@niu.edu or niuprssa@gmail.com.