People
Meet the team behind PR Academy. As well as our brilliant team of tutors, there is a small team working away to support our learners and PR Place community.
You’ll find us all over the UK because from the Lake District to south east London because we believe in flexible working. It results in better work-life balance and that’s good for our learners and of course the business too!
Ann Pilkington, Director
MSc, Dip CAM, MCIPR, APMP
I look after the operational side of the business and I’m really proud of the work we have done over the years to develop robust systems and processes.
About Ann
Ann is one half of the husband and wife team that set up PR Academy back in 2007. Along with Dr Kevin Ruck, Ann has grown the business into one of the leading providers of PR and communication education in the UK and the largest centre for CIPR qualifications.
She is also teaches on some of our courses. Her interests are in change management, internal communication and project management.
Having started out in regional journalism, she moved into PR working with high profile brands The AA, BT and Barclays. her next step was to lead on communication for large government change programmes before co-founding PR Academy.
One of her interests is communication on projects, an area that she feels is often overlooked which prompted her to write her book: Communicating Projects.
Kevin Ruck, Director
PhD, MBA, BA Hons, PGCE, FCIPR, CMgr, MCMI
I conduct research for PR Academy that informs theory and practice. My current interests are leadership communication and listening and PR education
About Kevin
Kevin is one half of the husband and wife team behind PR Academy. Along with Ann Pilkington, he set up the business in 2007.
After a career in BT that spanned customer service, community engagement and internal communication, he developed his special interest in internal comms and employee engagement. He saw the need for a qualification in this topic and initiated and developed both the internal comms certificate and diploma courses for the CIPR.
Kevin qualified in research as part of his PhD.
Kevin leads our CIPR Internal Communication Diploma course and is a regular speaker on internal communication and employee engagement.
He is the editor and co-author of Exploring Internal Communication, published by Routledge and now in its 4th edition.
He also likes to relate internal communication to Clash songs (having been into punk rock back in the day) adapting their lyrics for internal comms.
Richard Bailey, Editor
Hon FCIPR
Never stop learning! Practitioners know this, and it’s true of teachers too.
I find there’s a continuum between thoughtful practitioners, ambitious educators and research academics.
They are three sides of the one industry, not separate tribes speaking a different language, with different belief systems.
More about Richard
Richard is a public relations educator and editor. A former technology sector public relations consultant, he also has in-house corporate comms experience in science and technology firms.
He started a blog about public relations in 2001 – one of just three in the world at the time – and edited PR student magazine Behind the Spin from 2008 to 2017. He has been a public relations lecturer since 2003 and now works part-time at Leeds Beckett University
Izabella Fejer
It’s a huge task to process all the work that our students produce, but we have a fantastic team of assessors and it’s really satisfying to see the great results that people get.
Izabella has been with PR Academy since day one. She probably knows more about CIPR qualifications and how they work than anyone!
She manages a number of areas of the business – particularly the marking of all the assignments (we get hundreds every year) and looks after the invoicing and finances too. Both areas that require the attention to detail that Izabella has.
Shelley Pickles, Course Administrator
I’ll help you choose the right course for you and answer any of your questions. I love talking to students and feel I get to know many of them personally. It’s lovely to see a familiar name coming back to study with us again or send a member of their team.
More about Shelley
If you give us a call or make an enquiry, its probably Shelley that you will speak to. Shelley joined the team some years ago and since then has made the move to the beautiful Lake District where she is making the most of the outdoors.
She will make sure your enrolment goes smoothly and deal with queries once your studies are underway.
You can email me or call me on +44 (0)20 3862 6910 to have a chat about our courses.