Guest Speaker-Jilly Easterby- Head of Public Affairs, UCF

In the second installment of our weekly guest speakers, Jilly Easterby, Head of Public Affairs at University College Falmouth, spoke to the journalism students about her role at the Univesity and her path to this position.
The five main jobs she does are:
1) Media relations, which consists of giving official comments on behalf of the University to newspapers or other third parties.
2) Internal affairs, which is informing staff of policy changes or other related information.
3) Prospectus editor, creating the University prospectus as part of a team.
4) Web content manager, which means she is responsible for everything that is published on the University website
5) Community relations, which consists of dealing with complaints from local residents, attending local community meetings and generally convincing the local public the students are good for the area.

She originally wanted to be a journalist for the national newspapers, studying English Literature at North London Polytechnic, but quickly decided she wanted to get into publishing.

She got a job with the infamous Sidgwick and Jackson, selling publishing rights for many celebrities autobiographies, including selling Boy Georges' autobiography for a company record in 1991 of £250,000.

Sidgwick and Jackson were eventually bought by Pan Macmillan and Jilly began working as an agent for Colin Baxter, author of the Inspector Morse stories, selling the rights to his short stories.

After around eight years she decided newspapers were where the money was and so she managed to get a job at the Daily Express, suggesting books for the Saturday supplement magazine, eventually getting a job on the main paper helping with advertising campaigns.

Living in London for 13 years bagan to it's toll though. She started looking for work in Cornwall but took a job for a TV company promoting digiboxes and the upsurge of the digital TV switch-over in Chiswick.

Eventually after working there for around eighteen months she got the job at UCF and is also currently studying an MA in Public Relations.

The next big event she is gearing up for is the proposed merger with Dartington University.