Success is What You Make It

Sidoney Samuels-Atse

Often times persons exaggerate about their capabilities to fit a position. Experience is one of the key element that is missing from their list of qualifications. This, however, is the opposite for Sidoney Samuels-Atse, as experience is one of her key attributes. Samuels-Atse is an award winning communicator and engagement professional skilled at creating, planning and executing diverse initiatives to connect employees to the key strategies and priorities of the business. She is a strong project leader with consulting and writing experience in national and global environments. Samuels-Atse is currently the Associate Director, Executive Engagement & Stakeholder Relations Personnel at MedImmune, located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. However, she has filled the position of a Public Relations personnel prior. Hard work and determination has played a significant role in her career. This has resulted in her numerous accolades. As a communication professional Samuels-Atse has been responsible for numerous programs at MedImmune which has resulted in her two most recent awards, ‘The MedImmune Global Excellence Award and the AstraZeneca CEO Award. While in the post of a PR Practitioner, she has led in the training of several junior staff members and created the media relations competency in the firm. This ensued in junior employees gaining additional skill sets which generated revenue for the company as well as placing her senior executives in top tier local and national publications. Though she enjoyed the field, there were challenges that she had to overcome. She realized that clients had to be continuously reminded that the company’s reputation is crucial and needs to be protected as well as building relationships with the media could be difficult because of the changing faces of the media in the age of bloggers etc. Samuels-Atse thus advise young PR Practitioners to do their research-keep up with the media, build and nurture a relationship with the press—that will serve some good in the event you have difficult news to communicate but most importantly…. know what the media need—BE PRECISE.