Pillar Pen The
of the
Helen Edwards
By Martine Mackenzie
Helen Edwards is definitely the “Pillar of the Pen Centre”. As the Director of Marketing of the million square foot, largest indoor shopping centre in the Niagara Region, she acknowledges that she has a huge responsibility, but a fun one. She glows with true happiness which shows that this lady indeed loves what she does and is genuinely a good soul.
“My main responsibilities are all about advertising and promotion – getting our name out there. The other thing is coordinating with tenants, and really supporting them so that they can reach their goals, increase sales, increase traffic. BUT I’m also heavily drawn towards community involvement. Everyone at Pen Centre really believes in giving back to the community that has supported us so much over the years.” says Helen. Her typical day is not typical at all. Helen manages a great team. She has her hands in a lot of different things, but credits her colleagues with helping her to make the shopping centre shine. “We work as a team. We win as a team. Our success doesn’t come down to one individual or department”, she smiles. With social media so prominent in our lives, Helen and her Marketing Coordinator, Tina, regularly go through theirs to make sure they are hitting all of the right notes on the right platforms. Then it’s about event planning – The Pen Centre is involved in so many events, on-site and off-site. That’s a huge part of Helen’s job, along with coordinating advertising, and sourcing initiatives to help showcase both Pen Centre and its retailers. Helen laughingly adds, “We often have opportunities that just present themselves and sometimes we need to act fast and make quick decisions. It’s sometimes fly by the seat of your pants.” Helen is also charged with something that can be very challenging -- dealing with customer comments and complaints. “Most are very positive”, she says, “but sometimes, there are some that are awkward and difficult. Ultimately, the customer is the reason we’re all here, and our team makes every effort to turn even a negative situation into a mutual success.”
One might think that getting to a position like Director of Marketing would require extensive education, focusing on business. Well, for Helen Edwards, the right attitude, the right opportunities and the right timing all combined to put her exactly where she feels she was meant to be all along. As a trained Early Childhood Educator, Helen graduated at a time where jobs in her chosen field were few. She found herself with a degree and no job. Luckily, her best friend’s father was a doctor who was looking for an office manager. She spent 6 years in this capacity, but also began juggling some medical procedures. After getting the necessary certifications, “I was taking blood, doing vaccinations, ECG’s… The next step was nursing, but I am terrified of hospitals, so that just wasn’t for me.” Still going in a direction which was a far-cry from her ECE and now medical training, Helen came upon an ad for a Marketing Secretary at her local mall. “I spent a lot of my childhood at The Pickering Town Centre. I was very familiar with it!” With only office management qualifications, Helen was blessed to have a “lovely GM who hired me for my personality and took a chance on me,” she says. It’s obvious after just a few minutes of talking with Helen that she would be destined for much bigger things. Through much hard work and dedication, she went on to become Marketing Coordinator, then Marketing Assistant, then Marketing Director, holding her current position with the Pen Centre since 2016. Helen humbly says, “My experience has been on-the-job training. We also have a great resource called ICSC, the International Council of Shopping Centres and they offer courses that are the driving force behind educating people in this
