Colour Me PR podcast | Guest: Dayo Kefentse

Mubashira 0:13
Hi there, my name is Mubashira and this is Colour Me PR podcast. Join me for conversations with diverse women in communications who break the ceiling with what they can do. This podcast is all about being inspired and inspiring others. Welcome to our safe space. Hi, Dayo, how are you doing?

Dayo 0:46
I’m doing well actually Mubashira, and I’m really excited to be speaking with you and to your audience about my experiences. I feel like I’m at an interesting age. I feel like I’m still in my 20s and have but when I look at the calendar and the clock and realize I’m not quite there, and maybe I do have something to share, so it’s exciting to be able to share with your audience.

Mubashira 1:09
Dayo Kefentse is the Founder and Managing Director of Dayo Media and Communications, and an industry professional with over 20 years of leadership experience and communications, broadcasting and Public Affairs. At Ryerson University, she was the Director of Communications for the Office of the Vice President equity and community inclusion. She has also managed Media and Communications for the Toronto Organizing Committee for the 2015 Pan American and parapan American Games, a longtime advocate for education and inclusion. Dayo has lent her skills to the Ontario Council of agencies serving immigrants through the development of media literacy workshops, and the Toronto District School Board through communications and outreach support for the afrocentric alternative school. Dayo is currently serving as a board director with women’s habitat of Etobicoke. I am so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for joining me for calling me PR podcast today.

Dayo 2:08
Thank you for having me. Looking forward to our chat.

Mubashira 2:11
I’m always interested in learning how my guests got into communications. And because it’s one of those fields where, you know, we come in with so many different transferable skills. You know, I definitely stumbled into it myself, I’d love to start by asking how you came to find yourself in media and communications. What inspired you to choose this as a career?

Dayo 2:30
Well, I want to say that I I always sensed that I would be doing something in the industry from a pretty young age, I was always interested in the announcements, for example, and reading the announcements in high school, I went to high school and Mississauga. And I really enjoyed having that experience and hearing my voice. And not necessarily just to hear my voice, but more to share information with people. That was always of interest to me. Eventually, when I had to finish my degree, I always thought I would get into journalism. And I did get into Ryerson to do journalism. But I felt like I have to do something different. And I went to the University of the West Indies in Barbados, just to get some world experience and to get closer to my roots. Because both of my parents are from Barbados, and my grandparents and great grandparents as far back as I can, that I know. So I really wanted to get an experience of living there, which I did do. And when I returned from that, I decided I still wanted to go into media. And so I went into Humber College, and I did a radio broadcasting certificate. But what’s interesting with that is I remember when I had to do the application, I was between mines. I literally was erasing public relations as autumn whenever when in radios to and then switching them because you have to pick which one you wanted more, and I on the side, and radio broadcasting, that would be the first one. And I did that for a while. And that was a big chunk of my career. And then I’ve kind of transitioned into communications. But ask many people who have worked in journalism, you’re always going to be a journalist at heart.

Mubashira 4:04
Absolutely. And how have you liked working in communications?

Dayo 4:08
When we were in the newsroom, you would often hear communicators being called flax. I’m not sure if you know the term, but you will get to know the term once you start to get more into your career. And communications people weren’t really people that I found journalists really respected. And so there was a serious divide between the media people and the communications people. And it was it felt like you couldn’t really cross that wall, because you were either on one side or the other. And so going into communications, I felt a little bit of trepidation because I really was on the side of journalism. But over time, I started to really see that and as technology has changed, and as times have changed, that you can ride both sides of the fence a little bit, not not all the time, not for everything. But that wall that was there when I was starting my career, soseems to have broken down. And what I’ve taught students at Centennial because I did a couple courses that that I taught at Centennial is that you really need need both journalists need communications people to help get stories for for air and for publications. And communicators need journalists to get those stories told. So I think it’s beneficial to even have experience in both sides, and have respect for both sides. Because there’s definitely a role for both sides that I think, I think is important.

Mubashira 5:34
Absolutely. It’s definitely really interesting. And I think PR has had a pretty poor reputation itself for a long time, I think people are only now just starting to realize how much work goes into PR and that, for the most part, our intentions are pretty good.

Dayo 5:49
For the most part. And I think it’s important to what what a benefit of having a bit of a journalism career helps or if you choose to work in communications is to understand what journalists are looking for when they’re looking to tell stories, and to when you said for the most part, journalists have a good eye on when something is all promo and no story. versus when something is a good quality story that’s worth telling. One thing would be definitely for, for communicators, to really get to understand what makes a good story is ultimately, that’s what you really want to have.

Mubashira 6:27
And for me as well, when I was learning how to do Media Relations was interesting for me, because whenever I reach out to someone, even if it’s by email, I try my best to make it as personal and relatable as possible. So when sending out media pitches, I like to make sure I, you know, I’m really understanding the journalist speak and what their focus is. And it’s tough when sometimes you have to send out like 100 something media pitches, and you can’t personalize every single one of them. So I definitely struggle with that where, you know, I would like to make that actual connection for each one, if possible.

Dayo 6:57
Yeah, no. And it’s good that you have that instinct to be as personable as you can. Because people respond well to that. I know even when we you reached out to me, I was like, this young woman has a really nice touch, that does make a difference. So much has gone to tech and texting and shorthand taught that business of really connecting with people in a real genuine way is starting to wane a little bit.

Mubashira 7:22
And so just going off of that as well. how diverse Do you think the field of media and communications was when you first began?

Dayo 7:30
I came up during a time when city TV was a very exciting television station. And the reason it was exciting is because it was really different for its time, where they seem to really take chances with diverse people use was the one of the few places where you saw people have a variety of capabilities, a variety of ethnicities, etc, that were on the air. And that was unique, and ahead of its time in a way that we really noticed as young people growing up, because for the most part, everywhere else, if you did listen to radio, or watch television, or read the paper or new journalists, everyone else was more or less a white Canadian. Very rarely did you see people of color who were in any positions in front or behind camera, or, you know, on a byline or as editors, it was very rare. So as a first generation Canadian, of immigrant parents, I’m part of a cohort of many people that came up during a time when we were the first kids to really go through a system and graduate with a low Canadians who in class pictures that would have not looked like any classroom 20 years before that. And so we were in many ways pioneering a new way of being in the workplace and demanding different kinds of stories and expecting to see ourselves in ways that were not necessarily a standard before. By the time I got a chance to get my experience in media. One of my first places of work was the Canadian press. And there’s certainly weren’t people of color in that newsroom. In fact, the way I got into that newsroom was because I was doing a class assignment on diversity in newsrooms and the lack thereof. And I was interviewing people there to ask them what their position was on that, because you could just look in their newsroom and see that that was the case

Mubashira 9:31
That’s very brave

Dayo 9:34
well. I mean, it’s a way to get the issue out there and also get noticed a little bit but after I did that, and after my I finished my assignment, and I did well on it, I went back and I said my I did all my assignment. Thanks for the interviews, and if you have any opportunities, please consider me. And I got maybe a few weeks later to be like an audio editor. For sure. If I was in there and trying to pitch and looking around, I didn’t see any bull that were of different ethnicities other than white at that time. So we’re talking late 1990s, in any real role at all. And I, as I do a visual kind of check in my head looking back, that was not a priority at that time. I don’t know what it looks like. Now, I don’t know what it is now. And I know that since then, there were some hires that were made after me and more senior roles. But again, that’s a that’s a quite a waste of time ago. That was, so that was my first experience. year, a few years later, when I was working for CBC, I got in to that place on what was called a new voices program. And the new voices program was an acknowledgement at the time that there weren’t a lot of people of color up in the air again. So this would be now late 1990s, early 2000s, that they were looking to expand and enhance and improve the voices that were on the air at that time, I think they were looking for a bit of a youth perspective, as well as a different perspective, other than a white Canadian, the kinds of standards that you might see now, or the kinds of newsroom that you see now in 20 2020 years ago, was very different. But what programs like the new voices program would have indicated was that there was an awareness, at least on a corporate level that some change needed to start happening.

Mubashira 11:33
Yeah, no, that’s really insightful. And again, I think media and, you know, PR go so hand in hand, that it’s really important to understand how things have changed on both sides over the years. How do you think that your work has been impacted by, you know, the recent events in Canada and the US with the Black Lives Matter movement, and, you know, what, I think at least has been an increased awareness of systemic racism. And, you know, the issues that people of color face, you know, how have you as a media and communications professional, been impacted by those conversations without awareness.

Dayo 12:09
As a person, outside of being a professional, it’s been an awakening, for a lot of things, a lot of reasons. Regardless of the comfort with which we have grown up in Canada, some of us would, there’s a real awareness of the effects of systemic racism that we all have had to think about. And we that we’ve all talked about in private conversations and public conversations, which is helpful, because I think in Canada, we tend to forget, sometimes that these issues affect us, they might not look the same. But they still affect us in different ways, through jobs that we don’t get, or microaggressions that we experience in the workplace that we do or talk about, but we have figured out a way to power through because this is how we roll. Or as people of a certain age, we have gotten accustomed to things that we probably shouldn’t have gotten accustomed to. So the events of the summer, and if we’re talking specifically about the murder of George Floyd, and everything that came before and after it, I’ve definitely been a galvanizing point for many of us and what I think it’s happened, and what we’ve seen is that organizations are starting to really come together to start to create, in many different ways, either or change community as well, opportunities. And it’s been a challenge to for communicators, because I participated shortly after the George Floyd murder in a discussion with a group of black communicators who were struggling with the reality that we are dealing with our own pain around this. And yet, many of us have to work out statements, organizations about their status, what their position was on systemic racism. And in some cases, the people that I was talking to, in creating these statements knew full well that these companies weren’t ready for the things they were saying here may not have been true, or they’ve had to toe the line even. And so far as they had concerns about the way in which the organizations were handling things. And it was very difficult personally and professionally for a lot of people of color, especially the summer dealing with that there were some extremely difficult conversations that were happening with bosses with colleagues, but they were necessary uncomfortable conversations that need to happen. To start to fairness, there were discussions about how much or how little a company should be agreeing or disagreeing, or an organization should be agreeing or disagreeing with what’s going on in the world or putting positions out there or not putting positions out there and it’s often difficult as a black professional in this communications and media game to try to be objective, if you will, in quotes, while still being professional while still feeling this personally. So it has struggle for many of us to handle these difficult issues. But it’s also, I think, been a good career growth opportunity for all of us to really start putting our footing down about what we believe what we don’t believe, speaking up speaking out. And in many cases, I’ve also heard that people have gained the respect of their colleagues and more of an understanding from their colleagues, because they have now been often forced in to, to speak up and speak out, it has helped to at least start to bridge some gaps. But it has been hard.

Mubashira 15:50
And I like what you said about them being uncomfortable, but necessary conversations. And I completely, you know, understand, especially for those people of color that have sort of had to become spokespeople for their race or for people of color in general, it’s definitely been challenging and how much emotional energy and mental energy

Dayo 16:13
Emotional labour

Mubashira 16:15
Exactly. And especially in a professional setting.

Dayo 16:18
What I find fascinating, I’ve had lots of conversations with people who are sort of this Millennial Generation Z team, the ease with which they deal with things, it’s very different than what I know, or what I’ve experienced the way in which they don’t stand for certain things, things that we have to swallow things that we have to shoulder, they just won’t and I think that is inspiring in a different way,

Mubashira 16:48
For sure. How important do you think it is then for communications professionals to you know, have a real understanding of equity and inclusion work and how that feeds into communications in the work that we do, despite the level of organization out there. And I personally think there’s been an increased awareness now, where organizations are encouraging staff to be more aware and putting time and effort into facilitating the resources that they need for that. But you know, how essential Do you think it is for communications professionals to have an understanding of equity and inclusion?

Dayo 17:23
Well, I think it’s absolutely essential, Oh, I can’t see how it wouldn’t be essential, particularly after the year, we’ve had, I think, if there’s anything that’s come out, is how critical it is to be mindful of equity and inclusion. Without those words, at the time, that was very much what a lot of my career was based on from the very beginning. And it was an under an going way back to CBC in terms of that new voices program. For example, the idea there was an awareness that from a business standpoint, if people don’t hear themselves see themselves read themselves reflected in whatever it is, is being produced, they will just tune out, they will choose to purchase something else, they will choose a different company, they will move on. And so it is very important that every communicator really think about not just themselves when they’re communicating, but who else is receiving this information? Who else can benefit from this information? What are the voices that we’re not hearing, or that we’re not seeing that need to be included? As we consider whatever it is that we’re working on, it feels trendy, in a sense, but it’s all the sudden in quotes. There’s all these organizations that are now adding diversity and inclusion managers and departments and all of that, it’s because I think of a recognition Finally, that there needs to be some deep thinking about the systemic ways in which organizations communicate about the things that they do, and how they operationalize the things that they do. And maybe some of the things that they’re doing aren’t in the best interest of the wider community, and aren’t considering some very people that need to be included. And the drawbacks of that are like I said, you know, it could be a bottom line drawback or it could be a respect back and ultimately, organizations need to come correct. And so I think it is very important that communicators consider it and not just consider it, but make it a baseline for everything that they’re doing, when they’re creating a document, when they’re creating a video, when they’re doing anything is to really think critically and think openly and have those difficult conversations about what is it that we’re talking about, who aren’t we including, why aren’t we including them? What are the messages that we’re saying or that we’re that we’re doing or talking about? When we put out a piece of work, let’s look at it from all angles, we need to do better. And I think Canada is starting to make those changes and starting to get there, but seems to be a slow build, I have a 20 year history of working in this country. And I have definitely seen changes, especially in the past two years. But that doesn’t mean that there’s still not quite a bit of work that has to be done to continue to better represent and better reflect the country that we’re living in. Absolutely not. I couldn’t agree more times from communicators, that awareness comes from the people like yourself, and like myself, and like those listening, that are in a position to help craft what the message will be… Never question the power of the pen. That’s the power that communicators have. And it’s a serious power that needs to be thought out thought through, honest, open and willing to take in the breadth of what it is you’re representing. It’s a heavy burden, but it’s an important one that communicators have.

Mubashira 21:15
Absolutely, I think, especially for people outside of PR and communications, they don’t necessarily realize, like you said, how much power we hold as communicators being that kind of middle, that middle person between organizations and the message that they’re trying to convey, we do, you know, hold the power to guide them, and to show them where there’s an opportunity to be more inclusive.

Dayo 21:35
And I know you’ve talked a little bit about the fact that you’re a junior communicator, but I wouldn’t discredit the value of people who are Junior, I’m in a place now where I definitely seek the advice of people who are in their 20s. Because there are things that they will know that I don’t know, there are ways in which they’d like to be communicated to that is different than the way I might have grown up or that my parents would have grown up in. And it’s important that we be reflective of those differences. Also, as we consider inclusion, we should think about the fact that people are coming at this from a lot of different angles. And so I really encourage younger people not to think that because they’re younger, that their view is not important. I know that my view was important as a younger person, so much so that I actually wrote an editorial the Toronto Star when I was 17. And it was published. Wow, it was about the need for black radio, because there wasn’t anything in Toronto at that. But the point of that story is less about the fact that I wrote it, but more about the fact that at a young age, I realized that my voice could be heard and could be published and that it was important and that I had something to say. And I think when you have that happen at that young age, you just sort of at least it did for me in both feels emboldened to be able to use that voice in other places, I just really and even. And I remember I said I happen to be an extrovert. So that works for me. But even an introvert or people who might not want to take that style, just to really encourage younger people to really speak up in whatever way they want, whether it’s writing or whatever, but your voice is so important. In terms of in the realm of communications, there’s an organization that doesn’t think about the voice of the young people in their organization, and they’re really missing out on an important perspective.

Mubashira 23:28
Amazing, and I was gonna ask you, if you could share one key message or action item for our listeners today? What would it be, and I feel like you’ve shared so many along the way, but I especially love what you just shared right now, for young communicators to really consider what they have to offer because I completely agree. I have conversations with Junior communicators all the time about, you know, them being concerned that they don’t have a valuable opinion to offer or especially for young people of color and communications who think that they can’t talk about their experiences. But it’s all very valid. So you know, raising your voice to say what you’ve been through and how offering your advice based on your lived experience is so important.

Dayo 24:09
I think 20 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, I don’t think anyone would have cared about my opinion, or my lived experience. This wasn’t something that corporately people were talking about. This wasn’t something that was common. The idea was is that when you got a job, you were just supposed to be grateful for the job, work the job, go home, and take your paycheck, talking about lived experience. No one was really about that life. But now I feel like there is more tolerance for honest conversations. Again, it came at a price of many lost lives. George Floyd thurs and before and there will be after, unfortunately, sadly and tragically. What I think it has done though, is again, open the eyes of people in corporate to have a bit more openness for listening to people’s lived experiences in ways that I didn’t experience working here years ago.

Mubashira 25:09
Mm hmm. No, thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think, especially for me, it’s been so valuable to hear what the industry was like when you first started with the media world is like and just to gain your insight. So thank you so much for joining me for calling me PR podcast today, and sharing your experience and insights on the industry and non equity and inclusion in both Media and Communications. So is there anywhere that listeners can follow you online?

Dayo 25:37
Sure. And thank you so much Mubashira for inviting me This is really exciting. And I’m really pleased that I’m able to share this actually, as I’m celebrating 21 years in business this year. I’m really glad that this is one of the highlights of this year. But in terms of following sure people can follow me on instagram @dayokefentse on Instagram pretty many Dayo Kefentse’s out there, so you should be able to find me. I’m also on Twitter as well. And LinkedIn if they want to reach you there.

Mubashira 26:07
Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Colour Me PR podcast. I hope this conversation helped enlighten and inspire you about the value of diversity and inclusion in PR. If you’re interested in keeping the conversation going. Please subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify. And follow at Colour Me PR on Instagram for updates. Thank you for tuning in and I look forward to our next conversation.