Selene Guerrero

Develops strategies to foster and facilitate citizen and employee engagement, with a special effort toward increasing input from underrepresented populations during civic engagement efforts and projects. Gathers and distributes information on City issues and events for niche groups, which may include but are not limited to: City employees, such organizations as neighborhood associations and service organizations, parents of children in specific age ranges, non-profit groups, military families and veterans, ethnic and religious minorities, senior citizens, college students, pastoral groups or other faith-based partners and newcomers. Ensures concerns from those groups are communicated to the appropriate department and the groups receive communications in exchange to address their concerns. Maintains the Employee Connection web site/blog to inform employees about City news and to involve employees as City ambassadors, to spotlight employees for special performance, and to highlight excellent work being done across the City. Learns and maintains competency in various electronic means of communications, utilizing social media, electronic newsletters, and press releases.

• Builds and strengthens ties with community leaders throughout the city
• Finds interesting guests for interviews on the city's cable station
• Helps monitors the City's website and works with departments to ensure the content is accessible, customer-friendly and includes information for niche groups.
• Promotes events and "things to do" to citizen audiences by managing the presentation of the city's web calendar
• Builds audiences to ensure that city messages reach as many people as possible by building email lists,
• Marketing
• Media relations
• Public relations

Committed to learning about the various communities and leaders throughout the Southside which included Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach. Covered everything from town hall meetings, civic league meetings, community events, business profiles, education and sports. In this role, I worked closely with various Virginia Beach neighborhoods and was assigned as reporter to Kempsville, Red Mill, and Hilltop sections.

• Photographed events and created supplemental videos
• Wrote, edited, and met deadlines
• A motivated reporter who always engaged citizens and pitched original story ideas that drew readers online and in print

Filled a temporary position where I connected with Peninsula communities and wrote a majority of the content for the community Town Square weekly section. Covered cities: Hampton, Newport News, Williamsburg, Poquoson, and Gloucester. Also helped with the launch of TidewaterBiz by writing business profiles from Southside businesses.

Researched subjects and stories and wrote features about high-end restaurants and lifestyle throughout Hampton Roads

Provided customer service and worked closely with families and funeral homes locally and throughout the U.S. to provide accurate information by verifying claims on obituaries. Helped with pagination layout, proofed my team's work and helped maintain our team's 99.8% accuracy rate.

• Separately, I managed and wrote a military lifestyle blog for the newspaper's lifestyle website, www.hamptonroads.com

Minor in Communications - Journalism