Iris and her husband were married in the same church where Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds. All the guests had a great time, and none caused a flap.
Iris Dunkle
Iris Dunkle puts poetry to work. Once, faced with the challenge of getting employees at a large technology company to read and embrace a new social media policy, she sponsored a “Twaiku” writing contest in which participants had to summarize the policy using haikus of 140 characters or less.
“I have a real passion for employee communications,” said Iris, who – in addition to extensive experience in corporate communications – earned a PhD in English from Case Western Reserve University. “I always look for ways to make communications engaging and interactive, so that people get the information they need to do their jobs.”
Iris joined ROI Communication in 2011. Prior to that, she spent 10 years at Cisco Systems, first as a web developer and then as a Senior Program Manager for Web and Portal News Communications. In this role, she tapped the power of social media and other Web 2.0 innovations to develop a new internal news model for the company; revamped employee communications to more effectively engage an audience that was composed mostly of engineers; and standardized governance of content on Cisco’s collaborative intranet working environment.
In addition to her tenure at Cisco, Iris worked as a webmaster for the American Society on Aging and for a healthcare software company called the Burgess Group; as a 7th grade English teacher; as a writing instructor at several colleges and as an English professor at Clarion University. Currently, as a complement to her consulting work, Iris serves as an adjunct professor of English at the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching engineering students to write about the ethics of science.
Iris is unusual in that her facility with writing is complemented by expansive, in-depth technical skills. This knowledge of coding helps her exploit the full potential of technology to communicate more effectively, and enables her to understand and engage with engineers more easily.
“Being a poet and being a communicator are symbiotic,” Iris said. “I bring a poet’s creativity and writing skills to corporate communications, and the people I meet through my everyday work can inspire poetry.”
Before earning her PhD at Case Western, Iris earned an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a BA in English from The George Washington University. A mother of two, Iris currently competes on a masters’ swim team and enjoys her commute, savoring the quietude of her car.