1250 Valley View Lane, DeLand, FL 32720-2364
386/740-8872 º 386/734-1747
e-mail: khansen@stetson.edu or kathy@quintcareers.com

• Highly effective communications professional with exceptional writing, editing, speaking, and promotional skills.
• Creative, innovative presenter, teacher, instructor, trainer, and coach.

Highlights of Professional Experience and Accomplishments in Writing, Editing, Public Relations, and Public Affairs

Played key role on communications team of state Commissioner of Education, a member of the now-defunct state Board of Regents, who oversaw the State University System of Florida. Advanced the Commissioner's agenda by:

• Writing dynamic, well-received, award-winning speeches given by Commissioner to numerous, varied public constituencies;
• Orchestrating press conferences, arranging press coverage, and writing press statements;
• Achieving excellent track record in writing and placing press releases;
• Writing and editing articles and publications to promote Commissioner's initiatives, including a quarterly newsletter on Florida's public higher-education system.

Successfully promoted a public-health agency, university art gallery, and the university itself using innovative marketing techniques. Contributed to agency's/gallery's/university's community-relations success by:

• Producing and writing eye-catching printed pieces: award-winning newsletter, annual reports, brochures;
• Developing and implementing comprehensive marketing program to launch new clinic;
• Establishing effective database and launching direct-mail campaign to inform community of, respectively, health services, art-gallery, and university events;
• Organizing special events to promote services, lectures, exhibitions, demonstrations and generate good feelings about agency/gallery/university within the community; preparing gallery exhibition openings;
• Launching effective program of regular press releases and photos; establishing excellent media contacts;
• Conducting seasonal promotional campaigns; designing and writing ads;
• Saving thousands of dollars by typesetting printed pieces on desktop-publishing system;
• Maintaining network of 500 advocates and rallying them, through effective direct-mail appeals, to contact legislators, with one campaign resulting in a 40 percent increase in state funding for women's health care;
• Similarly maintaining contact with contributors to gallery and crafting direct-mail fundraising letters and packages to expand base of gallery contributors;
• Lobbying legislators to act in best interests of local constituents on health-care issues;
• Researching and writing grant proposals.

Implemented creative story ideas and deployed exceptional organizational skills to supervise newsgathering operations at a daily newspaper in New Jersey's third-largest city (circulation: 48,000) and a group of 10 weekly community newspapers (total circulation: 48,500). Turned newsgathering process into a well-oiled machine by:

• Planning and assigning comprehensive municipal coverage;
• Polishing reporters' copy until it sparkled;
• Writing hard-hitting editorials, feature stories, and an award-winning weekly column on family issues;
• Instituting creative staffing and training techniques to build and motivate editorial team of eager newshounds;
• Setting editorial policy;
• Establishing design-style guidelines, performing layout, participating in editorial page re-design;
• Launching total-market-coverage product;
• Creating daily news budgets and conducting daily news meetings, suggesting placement of stories;
• Scrutinizing AP and UPI newswires to determine which state, national, and international stories could be localized and deciding newsworthiness of those that couldn't.

Transformed a moribund editorial page at a 30,000-circulation daily newspaper into a lively, attractive, talked-about product by:

• Conceptualizing a single-issue Friday format to boost readership on the paper's least-read day;
• Initiating the use of a graphic element to lure readers into editorials;
• Recruiting columnists from the community;
• Writing a weekly column about the media, the sexes, and social issues and regular editorials specializing in education and health-care issues;
• Creating unusual layouts with striking graphics; constructing attention-getting headlines;
• Developing the concept of "packaging" letters and columns on timely topics for optimal readership.

• Conceiving, assigning, and editing a story that later won a national writing competition;
• Building cadres of quality freelancers by writing successful writers' guidelines and supervising their work;
• Conceiving and planning editorial formula and developing story ideas;
  
• Writing an average of four articles per issue, reporting/writing front-of-book news sections;
• Editing all copy, copyediting, proofreading;
• Participating in design, layout;
• Writing inviting headlines and peripheral copy;
• Promoting the publications through radio, TV, public speaking, and direct mail.

Systems Proficiencies

• Proficient with numerous word-processing, desktop-publishing, spreadsheet, presentation, Internet, and communications software applications on both Windows and Mac OS platforms.

Chronology of Experience

• Chief Writer, Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, DeLand, FL, May 2000 to present.
• Creative Director, Quintessential Careers Web site, and editor, QuintZine, an online newsletter for jobseekers, DeLand, FL, March 2000 to present.
• Instructional Designer/Instructor, Career Kickstart Course, Quintessential Careers, DeLand, FL, March 2002 to present.
• Lecturer (promoted from Adjunct Instructor), Business Communication, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, August 1996 to July 2000.
• Writer, Office of Marketing and Communications, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, September 1999 to July 2000.
• Freelance writer/editor, various clients; author, 1990 to present
• Consultant/editor, Stetson's Policies and Procedures manual, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, May 1998 to February 2001.
• Instructor, Elderhostel class, Art and Literature of the Feminine Mystique, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, December 1997 and January 1998.
• Special Assistant to the Provost/Special Assistant to the Dean for Enrollment Management, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, October 1994 to May 1996.
• Accreditation writer/editor/consultant, School of Business Administration, Stetson University, Deland, FL, 1995 to 1996.
• Coordinator for Gallery and Art Department Services, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, August 1993 to October 1994.
• Speechwriter for President of National Association of Social Workers and pro bono statewide Coordinator of Public Relations for American Association of University Women/Florida, 1990 to 1995.
• Speechwriter/Deputy Press Secretary, Florida Department of Education, Tallahassee, FL, 1989 to 1992.
• Director of Public Information, Planned Parenthood, Morristown, NJ, 1988 to 1989.
• Executive editor, Worrall Publications, publishers of 10 weekly newspapers in Essex County, NJ, 1986 to 1987.
• City editor, The News of Paterson, NJ, 1985 to 1986.

Major Publications ~ See complete publications list  

• Author, A Foot in the Door, Spring 2000, Ten Speed Press
• Author, Dynamic Cover Letters, 1990; second edition, March 1995; third edition, April 2001; Ten Speed Press
• Author, Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates, 1998, Ten Speed Press
• Co-author, Write Your Way to a Higher GPA, 1997, Ten Speed Press

Freelance Clients

• Various career-related Web sites ~ See publications list 
• Stetson University
• Daytona Beach News Journal
• Rutgers University News Service
• Cobb Cole & Bell (law firm)
• Florida Council on Aging
• Institute for Educational Leadership
• William Gladden Foundation
• Betty Castor Re-election campaign
• Florida Department of Education, Office of Business/Citizen Partnerships
• Business and Education Coalition for Technology and Change
• American Association of Community Colleges
• International Guild of Professional Consultants

Civic, University, and Professional Affiliations

• Advisory Board Member, Certified Electronic Career Coach Program, January 2002 to present
• Expert Panelist, Ask the Experts, CollegeRecruiter.com Newsletter, May 2001 to present
• Member, Volusia County Commission on the Status of Women, 1995 to 1999
• President, Stetson University Friends of Art, 1994 to 1997

Education
Ph.D. in Organizational Communications, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, OH,
expected 2005

Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, Stetson University, DeLand, FL
Area of concentration: Communications.

• Selected as student commencement speaker.
• Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Attended Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL;

• Won Kingsbury Award, a full scholarship judged on writing portfolio.
• Appointed to FSU President's Commission on the Status of Women.

Attended University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

• Won President's award for outstanding contribution to the university. 

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