Breaking Barriers with EMERGE conference 2016

The 2016 Emerge Conference is an annual event hosted by the graduating media students at the University of Guelph-Humber. The conference is an interactive event that allows students to interact with professionals in the industry. This includes speakers and supportive sponsors in public relations, journalism, photography and digital media. This year the event took place Tuesday, April 26 with over a hundred participants in attendance.

Speakers for this years conference included Ben Nemtin (MTV’s Buried Life), Jackie Redmond, Kevin Donovan, Michael Rizzi, Jess Hunichen, and Stacy-Ann Buchanan.

Each session is broken down into smaller groups, where guests can attend and ask questions for speakers. We briefly checked out a session from Shine PR’s co-founder Jess Hunichen, who spoke to participants about barriers. Hunichen explains, “That barriers are blockages that permits something from moving forward. It is a starting point and because they are there, they make us better and fearless.” The biggest barrier Hunichen went through was moving to Canada from Australia, not knowing a single person and starting a business. Participants all left the session with a big smile and with new valuable knowledge and key insights that will help further their careers in this industry.

If participants missed out on certain sessions, they had the opportunity to participate in a munch and mingle over the lunch hour with all the speakers. Lunch was provided once again by San Remo Bakery. We unfortunately didn’t have time to stay for keynote speaker Ben Nemtin, but none the less we can say this was another fantastic event and we can’t wait for next years EMERGE!

More information on EMERGE can be found here!