8 Questions and 2 Imperatives for Christine Hearn

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Who are you?
I am Christine Hearn, head of Coyote Communications. We provide media training to a variety of government and corporate clients. I also edit aq, the magazine of Simon Fraser University.

Who is your role model?
I don’t think I have one.

Describe your management style.
I have a hands-off management style. I assume the people I am working with will do their best and I leave them to do it.

What is your biggest professional accomplishment?
I was the first Ottawa bureau chief for BCTV (now Global BC) in 1975. That was a time when there were few women reporters on TV and few women (8 out of about 200) in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

What was your first job?
As a teenager I added up scale sheets (the measurements for logs so we’d know what to pay the contractors and the government) in my father’s lumber company office. I’m really bad at numbers and spending all day on an adding machine wasn’t my idea of fun. The worst came at the end of every month when everything had to balance and of course it didn’t. I think I drove the office manager/book-keeper crazy.

What are you reading right now?
I’m very interested in Scandinavian mysteries right now so I’m reading Jo Nesbo’s Redbreast. His books are set in Oslo, Norway and I’ve spent enough time there to really appreciate the sense of place he evokes.

Tell us one thing about yourself that might surprise people.
I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read since 1979.  Looking back I can always tell what was going on in my life by the number of books I read in any particular month.

What is the last conference you attended?
I don’t really do conferences if I can avoid them.

Blackberry or iPhone?
iPhone.

What’s your Internet guilty pleasure?
I can’t begin my day until I’ve read 5 newspapers and checked out Zite — all on my iPad.