Business Community Engagement Collaborative: Telling Your Community Engagement Story
Business Community Engagement Collaborative: Telling Your Community Engagement Story
Businesses play a critical role in driving positive community change. By aligning your communication strategies with community engagement, your business can foster stronger relationships with the public, customers, clients, and other businesses—ultimately creating lasting community impact.
This session will focus on how companies craft and communicate their community engagement messaging, with insights into managing public feedback—both positive and critical—related to the causes and events they support.
We’ll discuss key strategies for navigating public relations in community initiatives, with input from an expert panel featuring representatives from Dominion Payroll, TowneBank, and The Hodges Partnership.
Participants will:
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Understand how effectively communicating their community engagement efforts to the public can benefit their businesses.
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Explore real-world case studies of how three businesses effectively handle public feedback.
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Connect with professionals interested in best practices for public relations and community engagement.
The Business Community Engagement Collaborative is a network designed to support individuals spearheading community engagement programs within their businesses, newcomers to civic engagement roles, and business leaders seeking to strategically engage employees and leverage their resources for the community. We convene quarterly to share learning opportunities that help us build a stronger, more vibrant Richmond region.
Our Panelists
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Dr. Shayna Cooke, VP of Human Capital - Dominion Payroll
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Josh Dare, Co Founder Hodges Partnership
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Pat Collins, Richmond President - Towne Bank
Dr. Shayna Cooke, Ed.D., SHRM-SCP, is an accomplished business leader and educator with over two decades of experience in organizational leadership. As Chief People Officer at Dominion Payroll, she drives transformative initiatives in human resources, culture, and learning & development.
With a doctorate in Leadership & Administration, Dr. Cooke combines academic insight with practical experience in strategic planning, budget management, and fostering inclusive cultures. She has pioneered impactful Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) programs in both corporate and educational settings.
Dr. Cooke's innovative approaches demonstrate her commitment to developing high-performance teams. A sought-after speaker, she has presented at numerous conferences on topics including organizational strategy and educational innovation.
Her contributions have been recognized with multiple scholarships and grants, underscoring her impact in business leadership and education.
Josh’s career in communications spans more than four decades. In addition to providing strategic counsel and crisis communications direction to clients, he is the resident Writer-In-Chief, regularly writing op-eds and bylines on behalf of clients that have been published in The Washington Post, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Huffington Post, among others. He spent the early part of his career in the federal government, working in the press office at the FBI and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as on Capitol Hill as a press secretary. His move to the private sector included management positions at Sallie Mae, Circuit City and The Martin Agency and two high-tech startups. A Leadership Metro Richmond graduate, Josh is actively involved in the community, having served on the board of Greater Richmond SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now), the William Byrd Community House, Impact Makers, the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation and VPM. He currently serves on the board of the United Way of Greater Richmond & Petersburg. Josh was the 2017 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award for Excellence in Public Relations, presented by the Richmond chapter of PRSA. He received his degree in English from Gettysburg College. In his spare time, he likes to golf and write, having come in third in a national sitcom-writing content and penning a two-act play on Jesus’s PR counsel, among other efforts.
Pat Collins, a native of Richmond, is the Regional President of TowneBank Richmond. Pat’s commercial banking career spans four decades. Prior to joining TowneBank in April of 2014, Pat held various leadership positions at StellarOne, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, and Crestar Bank. Pat is a graduate of the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. Pat currently serves on the Boards of Bon Secours HealthCare Foundation Executive Committee as Board Officer and Treasurer, VBA Education Foundation Board, and World Pediatric Finance Committee. Pat is active with ChamberRVA, Venture Richmond and the Greater Richmond Partnership
