Sean Kirby

Partner
(902) 820-2115, (902) 222-6930
kirby@prospectusassociates.com

Sean Kirby is a public affairs, corporate communications and government relations executive with national and international experience with the Canadian government and some of the world’s most successful corporations. He has expertise in all aspects of public affairs and corporate communications – government relations, internal and external communications, media and public relations, marketing and branding. His background includes extensive experience in crisis management as an aide to the Prime Minister and a federal cabinet minister and as an advisor to CEOs and senior executives.

Sean’s work experience includes:

• Serving as a Partner in Prospectus Associates. Sean has been at Prospectus since 2001 and has served clients in a wide range of industries, helping them find public policy solutions that fulfill both the public good and business imperatives.
• Leading the federal and Atlantic government relations practices of a national government relations firm as Vice President (Ottawa & Atlantic). He provided strategic counsel to CEOs and senior executives in a wide range of industries, managed a half dozen employees and helped steer the firm’s overall corporate direction as a member of the executive team.
• Helping build and launch Cesky Mobil, a new mobile phone company in the Czech Republic. As a senior member of the international start-up team, he worked with the company’s human resources department to design and build its internal branding and HR corporate communications as the company began its rapid growth from a small handful of employees to 1200 in its first year.
• Providing strategic advice on all internal and external communications matters affecting the Royal Bank of Canada’s retail banking business unit and its nine million clients. He also served as a spokesperson with Canadian and international media on behalf of the bank and its senior executives.
• His private sector experience also includes providing international trade counsel and representing clients in trade disputes and trade tribunal hearings; co-founding one of Canada’s largest syndicated surveys about small businesses and electronic commerce; and as an entrepreneur in Canada’s music industry working as a performer, recording studio owner, journalist and concert promoter.
• In the public sector, Sean was a media spokesperson for the Prime Minister of Canada during the 1997 election campaign. Prior to that, he served as Press Secretary to Canada’s Secretary of State for Science, Research and Development and Western Economic Diversification. He has also been an advisor to political parties in Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Sean is a graduate of Dalhousie University and the Richard Ivey School of Business Strategic Marketing Management program at the University of Western Ontario. His volunteer work includes having served as Chair of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada (Atlantic Division) and Chair of its Government Relations Committee, roles in which he successfully lobbied the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to establish the first provincial catastrophic drug program in Canada. Sean is fluently bilingual in French and English.