PR pro: For me, there’s no other option but entrepreneurship

I ended up where I was supposed to.

The path that led to opening my own communications shop wasn’t always clear. Had a few things been different I might still be working for a larger firm. At some point though, the inevitable was bound to occur.

In my 20s, I worked for the current Canadian prime minister in an issue management capacity while he was leader of the opposition. During my tenure with Stephen Harper, I got to serve in two federal election war rooms.

After politics I slowly moved up the ranks at various places, until I ended up running the PR department at North America’s largest producer of charity events. It’s a well-run company that does good things for its clients’ bottom lines. Though the firm was six years old when I started, its vibe and culture remain very “startup.”

The CEO at my former employer is a classic “visionary type” entrepreneur—a delegator uninterested in minutiae, who trusts his staff. In this environment, I came to view the PR department as my own business. This perspective was, on balance, positive and certainly congruent with my personality.