One of Canada’s leading independent schools was still recovering from a past media crisis, and the school was committed to better planning for the future. The school enrolled Curious Public to equip its senior administration with issues management training and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) best practices. Their request was to create a customized training series to give the school’s senior staff the skills to assess and improve their current DEIB framework, issues management processes, and media response plan.

We paired with our partners at Denise O’Neil Green Consulting, a world-renowned diversity, equity and inclusion consultancy, to help us create the custom training series. First, we assessed the landscape of all other Canadian independent schools’ traditional and social media coverage, DEIB work, and any public responses given to the media during crises. We then crafted training materials that directly focused on communication with Gen Z, independent school-specific DEIB communications opportunities and challenges, and issues management best practices. The training was complete with fictionalized scenarios of increased media intensity for which staff had limited time to produce a concise communications response plan. Our media relations experts then evaluated response plans.

The training series gave the school’s staff a safe space to discuss sensitive DEIB issues and unpack their own experience of past conflicts. As a result of the training, our client was able to build an issues management process amongst senior staff and outline the school’s future media response plan.