Ken Steele

Senior Vice-President, Education Marketing

Ken Steele is co-founder and Senior Vice-President of Academica Group Inc., which now has offices in London Ontario, Toronto, and Boston.  Ken's area of consulting practice is institutional brand strategy and recruitment marketing, and he has led major projects in recent years for Lethbridge College, the University of the Fraser Valley, Mount Royal University, and the University of Saskatchewan, among others.

Four years ago, as a service to Canada's higher education community, Ken founded a free daily newsbrief, Academica's Top Ten, which summarizes important events, emerging trends, research findings and aspects of youth culture for more than 8,500 subscribers, including college and university presidents and senior executives, government policy analysts, faculty, high school guidance counselors, and national media editors. (Ken is now very grateful to have a full-time associate news editor, Katherine Fletcher, to ensure the Top Ten continues to be daily, despite his travel schedule.) Ken has written numerous articles and white papers on institutional marketing and strategy, a syndicated column on graphic design, and a regular blog on higher education issues, and now manages a YouTube channel featuring notable higher education commercials.

Ken is a "recovering academic," who was an award-winning PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Toronto, before leaving academia to found a regional advertising agency in 1990. Ken and his team developing branding, marketing, and advertising campaigns for dozens of corporate, non-profit, and education-sector clients throughout the 1990s, before merging the agency to form Academica Group in 2005.

Details about Ken's conference keynote and strategy facilitation services (PDF)

Ken's YouTube Channel (playlists of higher education commercials)

Ken's Slideshare Channel (slides from past presentations)

Read Ken's blog or book reviews
Read Ken's Institutional Positioning framework
Read Ken's 2007 Year in Review

Contact Ken:
(519) 433-8302 ext.205
ken@academicagroup.com