October 26, 2021 Tomika DePriest is moving on
Tomika DePriest is leaving Emory at the end of October to take on new challenges in the field of marketing and communications. As Senior Director of Communications for Campus Life since January 2016, Tomika has led a team that consistently provides the division with outstanding strategic counsel, executive communications, editorial, website, social media, graphic design, photography, and video services. Tomika also served as Campus Life’s principal liaison with the university’s Communications and Marketing organization, effectively managing that vital partnership. As a member of Campus Life’s Executive Leadership Team, she reports to Senior VP and Dean of Campus Life Enku Gelaye.
“Since my first days on the job, I have highly valued Tomika’s leadership of our communications team and found her counsel to be essential – and that has been particularly true throughout the pandemic,” said Dean Gelaye. “Tomika has also made major contributions to enhancing Campus Life’s reputation and visibility thanks to her exceptional skill at developing and implementing ‘big ideas.’ She will be greatly missed.”
Hitting the ground running
On the day Tomika visited Emory’s campus as a job candidate, the Spelman College alum recalls, Enku’s predecessor and the university’s Provost were drafting a response to the now historic 13 demands from the university’s Black students in fall 2015. In the months and years that followed, she helped shape the university’s response to those demands.
Joining Emory in January 2016, Tomika led communications support for responses to those demands, including creation of the university’s first annual Racial Justice Retreat, hosted on-campus that February. Later, she was instrumental in creating the Commission on Racial and Social Justice, an outgrowth of the retreat, and served as founding director of the CRSJ Internship Program, which engaged more than 30 Emory students over three years.
Under Tomika’s leadership, the communications team launched Campus Life’s new website and relaunched its social media channels, growing the SM audience by over 20 percent in one year. The team also reinvented the division’s newsletter, launching the weekly Campus Life Today in April 2020 to provide more frequent internal communications in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 70 issues of the newsletter have been published, now reaching an audience of more than 400 readers. Also, during Tomika’s tenure, the team developed more than a dozen stories for the campus-wide Emory News Service, each carrying Campus Life messages to tens of thousands of readers.
Recently, Tomika partnered with university Communications and Marketing VP Nancy Seideman to guide development of the current campus-wide public health campaign, which includes the magenta graphics encouraging use of masks, handwashing, and physical distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Four years ago, Tomika guided the launch of EmoryxMe, an initiative that has featured more than 30 students profiled online in their own voices, generating 275,000 impressions across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. She was a member of the executive team that launched TimelyCare and developed the Blue Folder to help staff and faculty better support students with mental health and other challenges. Her team also documented the Campus Life Incident Response Protocol to facilitate crisis response management in collaboration with the university’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR).
Representing Emory beyond the campus
Tomika also represented Emory beyond the campus through engagement with the American Marketing Association, which serves professionals who work, teach, and study in the field. She is also a member of the Public Relations Society of America’s Georgia Chapter and PRSA’s Counselors to Higher Education Section, a community of senior-level leaders and aspiring leaders serving higher education institutions. Tomikawas a member of the Emory team recognized with a Platinum Awards Honorable Mention from PRNews for campus-wide promotion of the Emory Votes campaign during the 2016 election cycle. Her last day with Emory is Wednesday, Oct. 27.
Tina Chang, Director of Communications, will serve as the department’s primary contact moving forward. She can be reached at ttchang@emory.edu or you can email the team at ecl-communications@emory.edu.
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