NFA PR’s hires and promotion, from left: Erin Banting, promoted to VP of marketing communications; Amber Mulder, associate director; Emma Bray, director; and Lindsey Hutchins, account executive. 

No Fixed Address (NFA) PR has added three new team members and promoted a leader internally in response to new business and expanding client remits.

Among the new hires is Emma Bray, who NFA PR has named its director. Bray joins the agency from Apex PR, where she had been working as an account director for nearly three years. She brings almost a decade of PR experience into the role and has also worked with Veritas Communications, Commotion, MSL Group and GCI Canada, leading the Canadian execution of global campaigns including Barbie’s “#YouCanBeAnything,” while also implementing Canadian strategies for brands including Yeti and WW.

Amber Mulder has been recruited as an associate director, bringing a wealth of experience in B2B and tech. Mulder has spent the past several years working in client-side roles with tech startups including Clutch, OpenText and Turo, but also worked in account services for Edelman on clients including HP Canada, Box, Intuit Canada and Symantec.

Finally, the agency has added Lindsey Hutchins as an account executive, who joins NFA PR by way of Narrative PR, where she had also been working as an account coordinator.

The three hires bolster a team overseen by Erin Banting, who was promoted late last year into the role of VP of marketing communications. Banting joined NFA shortly after the launch of its PR discipline in 2018 and has led work on campaigns for SickKids, Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Kraft Heinz, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Terry Fox Foundation.

“Integration has been the buzz word as of late but is something many are claiming without practicing in reality,” Banting says. “I came from the world in which you sat at an IAT table, each agency figthing for the bigger piece of the pie rather than collaborating to truly solve a client’s business challenge. NFA’s unique approach is what attracted me; the opportunity to work side-by-side with strategy, creative, media, content, digital, health and everyone in between and become a strong interagency collaborator and integrated thinker.”

NFA PR exists as a standalone business line within the NFA network, dubbed The Grid, but often integrates with other divisions within the company to deliver media and PR support. In recent months, the PR practice itself has won new work with Huawei consumer products and metaverse client Liquid Avatar Technologies. It has also expanded its remits with the Terry Fox Foundation and the ROM. The hires and promotion were necessitated by that growth.

“The Grid has always been a strong super power of NFA, with PR playing a key part of that success,” says Mark Carpenter, president of NFA Toronto. “We are excited for the continued momentum for this team and as they contribute to NFA here in Toronto and across the border.”