To Sarah Bednarski, director of communications and university spokesperson at BGSU, her goal every day is to tell the story of the university and help deliver its core message.
“Our main goal in the Office of Marketing and Communication is to tell the story of the university,” Bednarski explained. “To tell the story of our students, our faculty, our staff and our donors. Whether that be through creating a plan or strategy through a new program, or through a new building or whatever that may be.”
Bednarski graduated from the BGSU in 2000 with a degree in journalism news print.
“Up until my junior year of college all I ever wanted to be was a newspaper reporter,” Bednarski said. “Then at the end of my junior year, I decided that I really like to write but I don’t want to be a newspaper reporter anymore.”
This decision led her to transition into a career in public relations, where she had her first internship in the field during her senior year at the Toledo News County Port Authority. She continued on in this position, and shortly after, it became her first job after graduation.
“I kind of did everything at Toledo News County Port Authority where I was a jack of all trades, until I figured out where I wanted to go,” Bednarski said.
She traveled to a second job at Mercy Health, which she originally planned to be in for only three to five years until it “unexpectedly turned into a 17 year career.”
Bednarski first started out in internal communications at Mercy Health, then became a media relations coordinator, with the late years spent in executive communications. She carried on her role in senior leadership and presidential communications, where she was the spokesperson for the health system.
“It was a great career, I learned a lot and was able to hone in on what I like and what I am good at,” Bednarski revealed. “About a year ago, I found myself wondering if I should continue at Mercy or look somewhere else, and that was when this opportunity came up here at the university. I looked at it, talked with folks, and I knew that it was the next step in my career.”
Bednarski is responsible for a communications and news team in the BGSU’s Office of Marketing and Communications. The team deals with internal and external communications as well as social media for the university. Their core messages focus on faculty, staff and students.
“We do community-wide messaging. If there is a message from the president or university wide announcement, we are in charge of that. We are also in charge of the BGSU Magazine, which is the alumni magazine that comes out every year as well as Zoom News, which is geared towards faculty and staff. We do campus update every day and work to support anybody that does social media on behalf of the university,” Bednarski explained. “We want to make sure we are aligned in the core messaging of the university.”
Bednarski says that the most rewarding thing is seeing a concept or an idea that makes it all the way through the planning process to the execution.
“I am very proud and honored to have the team that we have. We have a very strong and diverse team that brings a lot of skill sets to the table, especially when executing a plan from start to finish,” Bednarski said.
However, it is working for the students that Bednarski said has the most emotional impact.
“I love being back here on the university and interacting with students. Walking around campus gives a different dynamic and breathes freshness into the reality of why we do what we do.”
