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About a year, or year and a half ago, I said to my friend/associate, “One day I really want and need to hire a Social Media Marketing/ Public Relations Manager. Running a blog as a business, with all that it entails – promotion, marketing, networking, website design an maintenance; plus continually having to hire my Personal Living Attendants and that whole process and then fitting everyone’s availability into my schedule and my needs, and also finding replacements when they call in sick, etc., etc. Hey…. who has time to write, right?
At times I wondered if the day of hiring such a person would ever get here, but alas it has arrived. Last week, I hired Mary Wilson, as DisabilityPride.net’s first Social Media Marketing/ Public Relations Manager, and I am ecstatic to have Mary on my team.
Mary grew up as part of the extended family of the Fredericton Community Living Society (FCLS). She worked as a relief attendant as one of her first jobs. Mary is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, in 2007, with a BA in Philosophy.
Mary started working in online marketing in 2007 and she was the first online video producer for PartSelect.com and Fix.com, starting in 2009. She was soon asked to use her background in photography to help set up a video studio and spent almost the next 10 years creating instructional and how-to content to help people become more self-reliant and independent. Mary won the Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference’s Best Use of Video in 2013. She has produced almost 2000 videos for PartSelect.com and Fix.com, reaching over 40,000,000 views on YouTube. Mary also had a brief stint/crash course in Purpose, Public Relations and Marketing, as part of the small team working with Carol Cone – the mother of cause marketing.
She has been around the disability pride movement since she was very small. Her mother was an alternative education teacher and a founding member of the Fredericton Community Living Society. She passed her passion for inclusive communities on to Mary. One of Mary’s very first jobs was as a relief attendant, working with a woman who had watched her grow up and treated Mary as family.
Mary is the mother of two amazing daughters. She is an “amateur” (her word) nature photographer, a novice crocheter, and a voracious reader.
I am so looking forward to seeing what comes next for DisabilityPride.net with Mary onboard.