CiB names new chairman

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

The soon to be renamed Institute of Internal Communication, currently known as the British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB), announced its new national chairman earlier today.

Dominic Walters will oversee plans to develop the association and, according to a CiB statement in response to a rapidly changing internal communications landscape, consolidate the body’s role as “the authoritative, independent source of information, guidance and support for practitioners and organization leaders”.

Walters, who has more than 15 years’ communications and change management experience in senior in-house and consulting roles, told Melcrum that the majority of the CiB’s 1,100 members were internal communicators and that the organization had “been moving in that direction for some time”.

“We have been formalizing this step by step, have presented our credentials to Companies House and, following our member’s approval at a meeting in the autumn of this year, will hopefully become a professional institution for internal communications practitioners.”

Walters added that the body would do three things for internal communicators: “It will provide professional qualifications, provide advocacy for the profession, fighting for and giving internal communicators a voice and credentials and provide policy for the industry.”

The new CiB chairman has worked with several large companies in his 15 years as an internal communicator. These include Royal Mail, ING, Lloyds TSB, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Nycomed, BA and local authorities. He is also a fellow of the CiB and was previously director of its south west region.