Schedule of Events

In today’s era of disruption, emotions can run high and technical information can be overlooked with the swipe of a finger. For communicators faced with sharing complex, technical information on emotionally charged topics, building audience trust and confidence is critical to organizational success. Now consider that your topic is the safe, long-term storage of nuclear waste. In this session, attendees will learn how the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is tackling this challenge, including insights from the 2025 Silver Leaf Award winning communications and community relations strategy, which helped the organization to successfully navigate finding willing host communities to be the future home of a deep geological repository for radioactive waste.

• Understand how to use continuous monitoring to assess sentiment and adapt communications: Hear how the NWMO used continuous monitoring and analysis of community sentiment to develop community focused, proactive communication strategies
• Takeaway actionable and practical approaches to empowering communities: Practical approaches to empowering local communities and integrating their voices into communications including co-creating content with Indigenous Knowledge holders, deploying diverse engagement tools, providing fact-based information and addressing critical voices respectfully.
• Learn techniques to build trust on emotional and technical topics: How to effectively communicate complex, technical information to counter misinformation and disinformation using fact-based explainers, transparency, local community voices and direct engagement.