About Mark

PRESIDENT

Mark Hunter LaVigne, MA, APR, FCPRS, LM has 36 years’ experience as a PR practitioner, professor and author.

Until 2022, he operated his own media relations and media training firm, Hunter LaVigne Communications Inc., where he worked with a number of companies including Aon, Kodak Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, McCormick Canada, Netflix, SANYO Canada, Schneider Foods, and Sega. Between 2023 and 2026 he was a full-time PR professor at Humber Polytechnic.

For 20 years, he taught part-time or guest lectured at Centennial and Humber Colleges, Seneca at York, Sault-College, Guelph-Humber, and Western, McMaster and McGill Universities.

He has a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications and English from York University.

He is an award winning, accredited member (APR) of the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS), and a member of the CPRS College of Fellows (FCPRS). He is a past president of CPRS Toronto and past vice president of CPRS National. He was recently awarded the Phillip K. Novikoff Award and appointed as a Life Member. He just returned as president of CPRS Toronto.

He is a chapter author of “Fundamentals of Public Relations and Marketing Communications”, University of Alberta Press (2015), co-author of the third edition of “In the News”, University of Alberta Press (2019), author of “Proactive Media Relations in Canada” (third edition), Centennial College Press (2019), and co-author of “Internal Communications in Canada”, and “PR Planning, Research and Measurement”, Rock’s Mills Press (2022 and 2023 (respectively).

Prior to PR, he worked in radio news in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto for five years.