Chris Bennett has been interim leader of the BC Green Party, senior adviser to TED Vancouver and now director of corporate communications at Best Buy, but he’s not letting his long resumĂ© get to his head.
“I wouldn’t define myself as successful yet,” he said. “I worry about peaking too soon.”
Bennett has spent half his life in public relations and communications on both the political and corporate fronts. He got his start working for different provincial and federal candidates, and in 2007, he was elected to the federal council of the Green Party of Canada, where he spent a year as the senior communications strategist.
“I’ve always had a love of political communication,” he said.
After spending a year as the Green party’s interim leader, Bennett left the political world and joined Best Buy Canada, where he got to make use of his political communications experience.
“I became interested in trying to define a clear leader’s message for the organization,” he said. “I had a lot I wanted to achieve from a communications perspective.”
Having had his feet in both camps, Bennett sees a lot of parallel between business and politics. Political parties and corporations alike both need to have a clear message to succeed, he said.
One of Bennett’s responsibilities at Best Buy is establishing and strengthening its social-media presence. Best Buy and Future Shop now respectively hold the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in Canada for media coverage as compared with other consumer electronics retailers.
“It’s a privilege to serve a B.C. top-five company,” he said. •
