EHC Now! with Charles Kinney

We asked Eight questions to EHC's new
communication officer.

Hi! I'm Charles Kinney.

So Charles, welcome to the EHC… how are you finding it so far
(tell the truth)?

It’s a challenge. There’s a lot of good work to do. I’ve discovered that (this is going to sound so mushy) that I have not had any passion for my work in a long time, and in a very short time at the EHC, I have found that again. I love this work. It’s good work. It’s something that humanity really needs, and that’s why I want to do it.

You kindly attended some EHC events before your official start day. What were some key impressions you got?

The first thing is something Brian said, which is “the goal of this is basically to put ourselves out of a job.” The second thing is the sense of community. People really care, it’s kind of shocking in this day and age that people care about anything, and people do really care.

Let’s talk just a little bit about you. You’ve been all over the world and had so many interesting and colourful experienceS.
How would you describe yourself?

Survivor! Even when I was so low in my life, it has been like a phoenix, I just rise up again. Adversity has just made me who I am. There is a time to sit down and cry a little, but then there is a time to say OK I’ve had my cry and it’s time to go back to work.

And professionally, you’ve been a teacher, a journalist, a writer and done random things like pick cotton weeds in Israel. How would you describe yourself professionally?

I see and understand my job as being a job; at the end of the day it’s a job. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give everything you have all the time. I love seeing the final product and how people receive it. I love to understand and get to that point; it doesn’t matter if I am manipulating media or writing a story, I love seeing how it affects somebody’s life. Especially with media and IT, in this day and age it’s so exciting because you can reach people through writing and visually; there are so many ways, so many humans, so many different ways, and ways to get those contexts across. It goes even further with the EHC because there are 46 countries and English is not everyone’s first language, so we really have to think about how we reach all those people and how we present ourselves and our objectives in a very different way than we have done in the past.

So, you’re really passionate about communications, huh?

I am. And I accidentally discovered this in life, which was the strangest thing. I was a teacher for so long, and then I started designing websites and writing press releases and realised I really love this, I really love what I am doing, and I completely found it by accident.