UOIT appoints new Director, Communications and Marketing

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) is pleased to announce John (Mac) MacMillan as the new Director, Communications and Marketing, effective Monday, August 19, 2013.

Mac comes to the university from the Ontario Ministry of Government Services, where he has managed the government’s pension policy team since 2006. He also managed several Ontario government communications and marketing teams, including those in the challenging ministries of Environment and Finance. As well, he led communications at the Ontario SuperBuild Corporation and Infrastructure Ontario.

Highlights of John MacMillan’s career include:

• Developing and implementing a strategic communication, marketing and branding strategy for the province’s first-ever loan program for the Broader Public Sector (which included colleges and universities);
• Strategic communications and issues management at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, including the government’s response to the recommendations of the Walkerton Commission;
• Implementing an award-winning media strategy to promote new air quality standards for Ontario;
• Brand development for Ontario’s SuperBuild infrastructure program, as well serving as SuperBuild’s media spokesperson; and
• Being appointed as a Trustee on the Board of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Pension Plan, a multibillion-dollar Canadian pension fund.

Mac started his communications career on Parliament Hill as Press Secretary and Special Assistant to Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology. There, among other key science and tech portfolios, he looked after the Canadian Space Program, the Science Council of Canada and the university granting councils (e.g. the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada). Mac’s career also included time as a freelance editor and writer; his work was published in the Globe and Mail, Financial Post and the Toronto Star. And, coincidentally, he wrote the first government news release that announced the funding for UOIT in May 2001.

For more than a decade Mac has volunteered on the Board of the Ontario Civil Service Credit Union, a mid-sized financial institution with some 16,000 members. He currently serves as the board’s Chair and has led the board through the recent turbulent times in the financial industry. Mac has also taught Current Issues in Public Administration in a post-grad public administration program at an Ontario community college.

Mac received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and has also studied pension administration at Humber College.

John MacMillan brings to UOIT nearly three decades of communications and marketing experience. His political, governance and media acumen will also help to guide UOIT’s communications and marketing strategies.