MANAGER, COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Victoria

The Opportunity

At BC Ferries, we connect communities across the coast, and our mission goes far beyond ships and terminals — it’s about building trust, fostering relationships, and creating shared understanding between our operations and the communities we serve. We are seeking a Manager, Community Relations to help build and strengthen relationships with coastal communities.

This role is equal parts strategist, relationship builder, and facilitator — creating spaces for dialogue, gathering feedback, and ensuring the voices of our communities are heardand considered in decision making. As the Manager, Community Relations, you will be the driving force behind our day-to-day community consultation and interest holder relationship building activities, including regular communications, meetings, engagement opportunities, and issues response.

You will be responsible for developing, leading and executing the corporation’s external engagement strategies, plans and processes, to deliver on goals set out by the company's engagement framework. You liaise with community groups and interest holders to create shared understanding of changes, new processes, and responses to feedback offered.

The Role

Reporting to the Director, Community Relations you add value by key areas of oversight such as:

• Managing all aspects of community and interest holder relationship building including regular public briefings, meetings, engagement opportunities and issues management.
• Managing all aspects of community and interest holder policies, processes, and activities including memberships, Terms of Reference, meetings, materials, resources, correspondence, facilitation etc.
• Managing all aspects of community relations outreach and engagement including establishing a strategy, calendar of events, planning, executing, and reporting on engagement events, e.g. community drop-in sessions, workshops, roundtables etc.
• Creating engagement strategies to support regular outreach and project-specific efforts, seeking opportunities to engage in alignment with the IAP2 spectrum.
• Facilitating dialogue on challenging topics with community members and interest holder groups to create shared understanding and mutually beneficial outcomes.
• Leading the strategic planning and delivery of public engagement on high-profile projects for the terminal construction team and others and collaborates with various teams across the organization to help those projects go smoothly with communities.
• Supporting outreach and communication with all levels of government as required.
• Organizing and facilitating public events, analyzes feedback to prepare public-facing reports, and responds to afterhours operational emergencies to support communities.
• Managing the development of materials to support engagement events, issues management, quarterly data reports, informational display boards, briefing notes, etc.
• Advising senior leaders in the organization on strategies to mitigate community impacts related to BC Ferries operations and high-profile projects.
• Working collaboratively across departments to ensure consistent messaging and coordinated public engagement supports to ensure BC Ferries projects, programs and initiatives are informed by or communicated to locally elected officials, community representatives, businesses and other interest holders.
• Working to facilitate response to community feedback through executive briefings, participation in cross-departmental meetings and working groups, web content, newsletters and making required changes and improvements to community engagement processes.

What you bring to the team

We are looking for individuals with a strong background in community relations and public engagement and comfort in facilitating challenging conversations with a variety of interest holders.

• A bachelor’s degree in communications, business, or other related field. A combination of education and experience may be considered.
• 7-9 years of experience working in community relations or public engagement role.
• 4-6 years of experience working with a wide variety of interest holders managing difficult issues.
• Experience managing, training and coaching a team in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience with public engagement and working to influence and deliver change in established business practices.
• Training with the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) preferred.

Join us!

If this sounds like your next great career move, please submit your cover letter and resume by September 7, 2025.

Additional information

The target salary range: $98,500 - $123,100 per annum. The starting salary is determined based on the successful candidate’s knowledge, experience and internal equity.

"We connect communities and customers to people and places important in their lives”

At BC Ferries, our employees are our most important assets in delivering our commitment to customer safety, service and satisfaction. We support employment equity and diversity in the workplace and we encourage applications from all qualified individuals including women, visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, persons of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity or expression (LGBTQ2S+), and others who reflect our ever-changing workplace.

We appreciate the interest of all applicants; however only those selected for an interview will be contacted.