Behind the Scenes with AMA Volunteers

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Read how AMA Toronto volunteers work together to recognize Canada’s marketing legends and bring innovative ideas to life.

Build your leadership potential as part of our volunteer team.

Are you an enthusiastic marketer who’s interested in meeting great people, gaining leadership experience, and raising your profile in the marketing community? We’re looking for:
• A PR pro with media relations experience
• A senior content developer
• Graphic designers
• Social media managers
• Event managers
• Business development professionals
• And more…

Please check out our job postings at https://ama-toronto.com/community/volunteer/ or contact me at debbie.bolton@ama-toronto.com

In Memorium: Vishal Tendulkar AMA Volunteer

Members of the AMA Toronto volunteer community were shocked and saddened to learn that one of our highly regarded volunteers and January Rockstars, Vishal Tendulkar, died on June 4.

Vishal generously applied his business and creative talents as an outstanding Director of our Member Networking Group events. He was an integral part of our AMA volunteer community and we will miss him greatly. Our thoughts go out to his wife and daughter who had recently joined him in Canada. A GoFundMe page has been started by a friend of Vishal
https://gofund.me/3c2f47da

 

Behind the Scenes: Pulling Together a Legendary Event

On May 12, AMA Toronto hosted its first in-person Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends (CMHOL) gala since 2017. The gala celebrated AMA’s latest group of marketing legends who have had significant impact on Canada’s marketing and business community as well as a promising young Marketer-on-the-Rise. It was a stellar and diverse group of winners.

Our CMHOL program and gala depend on a large team of volunteers to plan and execute. This year was especially demanding. There was the uncertainty of whether pandemic conditions would let us proceed in-person. The in-person event was cancelled in 2020, and, in 2021, we switched to a virtual format. But this year, more than 150 attendees enjoyed a wonderful evening at Palais Royale on the edge of Lake Ontario.

The planning and execution of the May gala started many months in advance. We reached out to the community to nominate legends in November 2021 and compiled profiles on 88 nominees. The independent judging committee met in January. The promotions, partnerships, sponsorships and ticket sales needed to be planned and executed. These tasks took place as we also hosted our Legendary Leadership Series events featuring our Legends from 2021. It’s a huge job.

Our special thanks go to:

Jacob Kessler, VP Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends who has worked with this program since 2016 and was instrumental in relaunching this important event and the year-long program that supports it.

The CMHOL team: Adriano Ueda, Luv Nagpal, Taylor Marsh, Sanchi Datt, Adi Mabel Montas

CMHOL 2022 Jury Chair (and Legend): Nancy Marcus

CMHOL 2022 Legend Selection Committee: Anne Marie Leclair, Bobby Sahni, Chris Powell, Garth Thomas, Jani Yates, Lex Perry, Lisa Kimmel, Sarena Ally, Vanessa Gaik, Wahn Yoon

CMHOL 2022 Gala MC (and Legend): Tony Chapman

Malaika Palmer, VP Events who organized the gala and has overseen Legendary Leadership Series events and our other events throughout the year.

The Events team: Hadijah Creary, Meerah Jayakumar, Sanaz Koosha, Olga Pigeon

The Marcom team: VPs Santo Ligotti and Wendy Greenwood, Jessica Zuckier

The PR team: VP Rob MacLean, Elvina Bulatova, Tamara Dinelle

The Digital team: VP Christy Varicat, Shauna Lichtblau, Ikram Nagdawala

The Partnerships/Sponsorships and Business Development teams: VP Steve Simkus

The AMA Toronto Executive and Board: Tina Portillo, Miglena Nikolova, Craig Lund, Matt Chong, Barbara Boyd, Debbie Bolton, Chris Stathousis, Christine Andrew, Darko Rakin, Oscar Rank, Vincent Mok, plus other team VPs listed previously

Our Advisory Council: Arthur Fleischmann (co-chair), David Kincaid (past-chair), Alan Middleton, Chantal Butler, David Pullara, Eric Tang, Fatima Israel, Gallant Law, Matt McKenzie, Trinh Tham, Yasmin Pallan

Our Partners and Sponsors: Globe and Mail Media Group, Mission Hill Family Estate Winery, CLIO, FCB Content, Lapse, Lulu Marketing Communications, Score Promotions, Victoria May, Isabela & the Three Sounds (Isabela Perez, Gabriela Laconsay, Lazar Miric, Steven Noronha)
Table Sponsors: Balmoral Multi-cultural Marketing, Canada Goose, Gowling WLG, RADKE, Scotiabank, Seneca, Tangerine, zulu alpha kilo

Our Legends Auction participants: Arthur Fleischmann, Nancy Marcus, Sharifa Khan

 

Our May Rockstars
Our May Rockstars are a group of volunteers whose ideas and efforts continue to lead AMA Toronto forward. A big thank you to Flavia, Maithili and Tamara.

 

 

Flavia Barbosa: Director Volunteer Engagement
Flavia is a two-time Rockstar and an amazing contributor to the AMA Toronto community. She consistently collaborates with her fellow Director Maithili, to create fresh ideas including our April Volunteer Week “Gratitude” video campaign. Then she rolls up her sleeves to promote and execute. For the video campaign, she edited 16 short volunteer do-it-yourself videos into 3 video compilations which were posted on LinkedIn and our volunteer Slack channel.

Flavia is a Senior Marketing Project Manager at Bond Brand Loyalty and an experienced CPG and travel marketer and entrepreneur.

Maithili Khansaheb: Director Volunteer Engagement

Maithili is also a creative thinker and doer and a two-time Rockstar. She has contributed to AMA’s volunteer community in a multitude of ways. Maithili initially helped develop our Rockstar program and works with Flavia to run Volunteer events and other engagement activities. She was the co-lead of this year’s Volunteer Week video campaign and worked with the Marcom team to bring the campaign to life.

Maithili is a Digital Marketing Manager at League. She has a MSc in Marketing from John Hopkins University.

Tamara Dinelle: Manager Public Relations

Tamara is another highly regarded team member and two-time Rockstar. She has worked on both our Membership and PR teams and is viewed as “an idea machine” for PR efforts. She recently generated a brilliant article in Canadian Lawyer Magazine for Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legend inductee Brenda Pritchard. This is a landmark article for AMA Toronto as we push out into other business verticals with our news about CMHOL.

Tamara is the Director of Marketing and Communications for York University’s School of Continuing Studies.

If you’re interested in learning more about our talented volunteer community and opportunities, please contact me at debbie.bolton@ama-toronto.com

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