Konnor Yurchak

Public Relations Specialist

Vanguard

After spending over 7 years with the global PR agency Ketchum, Konnor transitioned to corporate communications work at Vanguard last summer, in 2025.

Elon Graduation Year

2018

Live Oak Communications Involvement

Account Executive, Account Supervisor

Konnor's Company History

A Q&A with Konnor

What skills did you develop or enhance during your time at Live Oak Communications?

Live Oak Communications was my first experience with a communications agency. During my time at Elon University, I had internships in internal communications, event planning, marketing, and more. While these experiences were amazing, I never had a true agency internship, so going into the workforce, my experience with Live Oak was all I had.

Because of this, Live Oak was where I also ran into common challenges faced at agencies for the first time. Is your client not getting back to you in a timely fashion? Are they having trouble articulating what they are looking for from your team? In working at Live Oak, I faced these roadblocks as an account executive and, later, as a supervisor – and let me tell you, I faced these same roadblocks every day during my time in the agency world. On the flip side, I saw the creativity and impact that a communications function can have when its internal and agency teams are in lockstep.

Overall, Live Oak helped me develop foundational client communications and leadership skills that I still carry with me today.

Click the picture above to see Live Oak's Spring 2017 newsletter, when Konnor served as an Account Executive.

You have interned in a few different capacities – alumni engagement, marketing and special events, etc. How did these experiences shape your post-graduate career aspirations?

I loved all three of my internships for different reasons. I have Elon University to thank for my first, which I completed during my semester abroad in London my sophomore year (yes, I went a year early!). Having an international internship – even if it was just for a couple months – gave me something totally unique on my resume for future applications. If you are thinking of studying abroad, having an internship opportunity embedded within the program is a massive selling point.

That first internship in London with the Association of Commonwealth Universities was my first foray into office life. I learned valuable lessons like what it means to BCC someone and not CC someone (I learned this the hard way) and how to conduct myself in a business setting. Simultaneously, I was planning events for the association’s members around the world, specifically in the UK, Malta, and Papua New Guinea. My second internship with a local magazine near my hometown involved a lot of blog writing and event planning – it helped me tap into my more creative side.

Then my last internship with The Madison Square Garden Company was fully internal communications, which was totally new to me at the time. I helped plan employee events, craft communications to employees, and more. While sadly they didn’t offer free tickets (I am always asked that question), I did get to work with many of the arena team members, and I was constantly in the back areas of the arena.

My internships solidified that I was on the right track and that communications was truly the right industry for me.

During your time at your first agency and Ketchum, you worked with clients in industries such as energy, security, telecoms, financial services, and B2B technology. How did you become well-versed in these fields in order to properly serve and support clients?

Lots and lots of research – and a bit of a “fake it until you make it” attitude. At my first job, I mainly worked with B2B telecommunications and security companies. That is not something you just know the ins and outs of going in, but the expectation of a communications team member is that you are an expert in the company and industry you are working with. Any downtime I had – which wasn’t much – was spent researching and learning. However, in the agency world where you are moving so quickly, you get good at learning by doing. Having the foundational knowledge allows you to better contribute to your clients’ goals. During my time at Ketchum, I was able to help launch a financial services company’s metaverse presence, secure interviews for a project manager planning big music festivals, and organized an event headlined by an investment company and a fashion designer, if you can believe that combination.

As I just moved into an in-house role last year, I am learning that the expectation of knowledge is even higher when you are in a corporate communications position. At an agency, the expectation is to know enough to be dangerous – learn what you can to make an impact, secure media opportunities, make strategic recommendations, etc. On the inside, you are the one working directly with the experts in your field and at your company. The expectation is that you not only know enough to be dangerous from a communications perspective, but enough to understand your leaders and tell their stories in engaging ways.

You held various positions at Ketchum from assistant account executive to managing account supervisor within six years. What was the process like in getting promoted and how did your duties change as your job title changed?

There is a saying that you should dress for the role you want, not the role you have. I would go a step further and say that you should act like you already have the role you want.

The understanding I had going into the workforce was that, if you were up for a promotion, you had to earn it and, when you did, your job expanded to fit that new role. In my experience on the agency side however, team members are typically promoted when they are behaving like they are already at the next level. Because of this, the duties of my job expanded not when I was promoted necessarily, but when my supervisors felt I was ready to take on bigger, more strategic things. At an agency, your title comes second to your skill level – if your supervisors think you can take something on, they’ll give it to you.

With this in mind, my recommendation is to always pay attention to how your teammates are acting around you, especially those one and two levels above you. Not from a competition standpoint, but from a standpoint of understanding what it takes to be at that level. How do they solve problems? How do they interact with internal and external stakeholders? How are they making their ideas known? Learning what to do (and in some cases, what not to do) goes a long way in helping you prepare for the next level.

I would go a step further and say you should act like you already have the role you want.

How did you balance pursuing a Master’s degree while working full time?

Planning ahead! My program with Purdue University was fully online, asynchronous, and project-based. I was able to get each syllabus and plan out how I could do the work needed, and ahead of schedule if possible. For me, my full-time work was always the priority (after all, it pays the bills!), so my education at that time was secondary. My goal was to get my academic work done ahead of schedule so that, if and when things came up at work that caused me to work late or focus harder on that aspect of my life (which does happen in PR!), I had a safety net that prevented me from falling behind in my coursework.

I will say, after working full time, going back to school was nerve-wracking at first, but being a student came much easier to me. Since I completed a communications master’s program, my coursework covered topics and projects I was already immersed in every day for my job. It made the coursework easier and more interesting. Working full time also taught me how to better manage my time, which helped immensely when I went back to school.

I do feel I need to leave a disclaimer here that most communications roles (and especially entry level roles) do not require a graduate degree. When I was graduating from Elon University, I went back and forth between continuing my education and entering the workforce as my next step. I decided to go right into working and I don’t regret it at all.

You now work as a PR Specialist for Vanguard. What does a typical day look like for you in this role?

These days my new role is focused mostly on media relations, but my remit is growing. A typical day for me can include developing media strategies, pitches, and media lists to pitch financial services media; drafting bylined articles and social media posts; training Vanguard leaders to be media spokespeople; providing counsel on the media landscape to internal partners; and collaborating with our marketing team to create stories amplifying survey data and new products.

I’ve also been traveling a bit with my spokespeople to some cool places. I was in New York City in January with a spokesperson who was taking a series of interviews in Midtown Manhattan, and I recently attended conferences in Huntington Beach, CA and Miami, FL (which was quite literally on the sand) to secure and staff media interviews with Vanguard spokespeople on the ground.

Between the “doing,” you can usually find me at my desk trying to identify the next interesting story we could be telling for the divisions that I support.

What advice would you give to students looking to break into the PR industry, whether it is agency or corporate work?

I have so many things that I would want to tell my past self during my time at Elon University – this is what comes to mind:

You may not have a job lined up when you leave Elon University, and that’s okay. I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: communications is not like other industries that hire for entry-level positions months or even years prior to graduation. Communications hiring managers are hiring for roles that need to be filled immediately, and they want you to start on Monday. Because of this, I was a little disheartened as I was graduating because, after applying for over 130 jobs during my senior spring semester, I heard many times from hiring managers that I was “too early.” It’s feedback you don’t want to hear as your friends have jobs lined up and your parents are breathing down your neck. But, after I graduated, I secured a job in under a month. The communications world moves fast, so don’t get down on yourself if you graduate without a firmed-up next step – that is completely normal.

Your first job likely won’t be your dream job, and that’s also okay. When I graduated from Elon University, I was obsessed with the big agencies with the big clients. What I wish I could tell my past self is: don’t ignore the smaller, boutique firms. I started my career at a tiny agency with nine people including myself and the CEO. At these small agencies, there are more opportunities to punch above your title and get opportunities that might be harder to come by at larger agencies or companies with stricter hierarchies. Your first job is an opportunity for you to learn and grow to move on to other things. I always encourage people to look at agencies of all sizes when they are starting out in their careers. The agency setting is fast, everyone gets a little “down and dirty,” and, because you are all communications professionals, everyone knows and truly appreciates the work. There are people to learn from everywhere you look, and there are always opportunities to learn new things that can open new doors down the road.

Be prepared to research and pitch! I have said a few times during my career that Elon University does a phenomenal job preparing you for when you have a few years under your belt in the communications and public relations industry. However, when you’re first starting out, what you focus on in many of your classes is what your superiors will focus on at an agency. As an entry level employee in PR (especially at an agency), your primary tasks will be to pitch media almost daily, put together coverage recaps and media lists, manage lists of awards and speaking opportunities, and research the news to find interesting angles for your clients. If you feel you are being left out of the higher-level creative work, don’t get frustrated – your leaders want to see you master these tasks before bringing you into the strategic work. While Elon University classes give you a holistic look at communications – media relations, strategy, design, analytics, etc. – most agencies still see media relations as their bread and butter. If you don’t have an agency internship (like me!) I would recommend doing some research on media pitching strategies before you start your job. I wish I did!

Raise. Your. Hand. The thing that separates a good entry level team member from an amazing entry level team member is almost always proactivity. When you’re starting out in your role, pay attention to what is asked of you, and try to anticipate future tasks by volunteering to own tasks before they are assigned to you. When you get feedback, think about how that feedback applies to all your work, and not just the task at hand. When someone needs help, or when someone needs a volunteer to take something on, raise your hand. Proactivity goes a long way, and it does get noticed. Communications is a team sport and, if you are known as a team player, you quickly earn the respect from those around you.