About Leona Hobbs
Leona Hobbs is a Toronto-based marketing and communications professional with 15 years expertise in social media and digital marketing.
Before starting her consulting practice, Leona was vice president and partner at Social Media Group, a leading agency helping companies make the most of the social web. Prior to joining Social Media Group, Leona was director of marketing and communications at Tucows, an Internet services and software company.
Leona has also worked for Yahoo! and for Fleishman-Hillard. She frequently speaks about the social media and digital marketing to students and at conferences.
Leona is a volunteer organizer of Toronto Girl Geek Dinners and PodCamp Toronto. She is chair of the advisory committee of the post-graduate Public Relations program at Loyalist College.
It's been all about marketing for Leona Hobbs since her days editing school yearbooks. After completing journalism school, Leona was recruited to join Fleishman-Hillard, a global public relations agency. While at the agency Leona pursued a progressive career path. She worked with clients across a number of sectors – video games, healthcare, food and telecommunications. With a knack for strategy, Leona was promoted through the ranks from intern to vice president over a seven-year tenure.
From the earliest days of her career, Leona has focused on the Internet's disruption of mass media. The first Internet client project she developed (in 1999) was a Tomagotchi-inspired game designed to teach kids how greenhouse vegetables are grown. Leona participated in the formation of Fleishman-Hillard's global interactive practice group and became a subject-matter expert for the agency. In addition to her digital and online projects, Leona developed content for clients and honed her earned-media skills pitching and securing mainstream and blogger coverage.
In 2004, Leona began to work with Yahoo!. She immersed herself in Yahoo!'s four-pillar business model for content, community, search and personalization. She worked closely with marketing, in-house counsel, sales and product teams for Yahoo!’s operations in Canada and delivered co-marketing activities with Yahoo's business partner, Rogers. Over her three years working with Yahoo! Leona developed campaigns and programs to drive user engagement with Yahoo! content and services like Search, Mail, Music and Photos.
Hungry for more work with Internet services and applications, next she moved to Tucows as director of communications. While frequently remembered as the original software download site, when Leona joined in 2006, Tucows’ core business was in wholesale domain names and email services. She lead 24/7 customer communications, corporate communications, internal communications, investor relations, trade show marketing, branding and product marketing communications.
After meeting Maggie Fox, founder of Social Media Group through Toronto Girl Geek Dinners, Leona recognized the potential for a great collaboration and joined Social Media Group in 2009 to service the Ford Motor Company account. Together, Leona and Maggie built a thriving social media agency focused on providing services for companies seeking to recognize and harness the burgeoning opportunities in social business. Frequently working at the vanguard of social media marketing and driving applied innovation, Leona's work focused on strategic planning and social media roadmap development, social listening and online reputation management, generating earned media, content marketing and B2C and B2B social media marketing. Leona supported a number of key accounts including SAP, 3M, Thomson Reuters, CNN, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Sleep Number, two of Canada’s largest banks and a global professional services firm.
In 2012, Leona stepped away from agency life and ventured out on her own as an independent consultant.
Frequently called upon to comment on social media and marketing in the media, recent coverage for Leona includes the National Post, CTV News, CBC Radio, Canadian Business, Sun Media, TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, and The Globe and Mail. She also speaks at conferences and lectures to post-secondary students.
A natural leader, Leona is deeply committed to teamwork and establishing productive partnerships with colleagues, clients, vendors and her extended network. She is a self-confessed workflow geek and lover of agile business. Leona is a student of the Co-Active coaching system as a model for conduct in interpersonal relationships.
In 2010, Leona was recognized by The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) with a World of Difference 100 award in the community category. She is Chair of the program advisory committee for the post-graduate public relations program at Loyalist College. Leona is an active participant in the Toronto digital media community. She is a volunteer organizer for PodCamp Toronto and Toronto Girl Geek Dinners.
Family and friends are the grounding forces in Leona's life. She and her husband travel and enjoy frequent retreats to the family cottage. She is the proud owner of Scotia, the most adorable Goldendoodle on the planet. Leona reads hardboiled detective fiction like it's going out of style and loves to cook.