Renée

O’Drobinak

Head of Marketing & Communications,

Donald Insall Associates

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Rumour says she was once crowned a champion of an East London comedy Haiku panel show

Once described in PR Week as the ‘Japanese Slovakian-American performance artist’, Renee hails from a pretty unusual mix of cultures and professional experience. She’s the Head of Marketing and Communications at Donald Insall Associates where she’s bringing offbeat thinking to how our relationship to the past impacts the future of our built environment.

Renée cut her teeth in architecture communications at the likes of AJ100 top 10 practice Hawkins\Brown. A keen advocate of uplifting comms pros in the AEC industry, she sits on the steering committee for the built environment networking group Build Up.

A graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art and the London College of Communications, she has been a contemporary artist for over a decade as one-half of the duo Ladies of the Press, specialising in live publishing and audience engagement. In the past, she has led creative workshops for the likes of Tate, Southbank Centre and Wellcome Trust, and has jointly guest lectured on art and print at universities in London, Denver and Oslo.

Rumour says she was once crowned a champion of an East London comedy Haiku panel show — having competed entirely in Japanese and interpretive dance — though she never quite made it to the Edinburgh Fringe.

Q&A 

Why did you sign up to be a judge for The Pros Awards 2024?
Because I’m still here, waving the flag for built environment comms pros – visibility matters!
What Insta/Twitter(X)/Tik Tok account should every comms pro follow and why?

Joris Lechêne on Insta. I admire his ability to take on big topics in the built environment, add his own cutting social commentary to it and also make it human and relatable.

What was your favourite PR/comms story from 2023 and why?
I daresay it’s the launch of Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanise campaign which is fast becoming our industry’s ‘deliciously marmite’ topic. Love it or hate it, it’s getting people talking about the built environment and that in itself is something that many built environment comms pros aspire to.