Employee Spotlight: Kseniya Strozhevskaya

1. What is your role at KFC?

My name is Kseniya, and I'm a public relations manager at KFC Russia and the CIS. As part of the PR team I provide communication support to all business initiatives through strategic campaigns focused on target audiences – new projects launches, new products announcements, new markets expansion, etc. I develop PR plans & tactics, do budgeting, manage press office work. I'm also in charge of all media related activities and crisis communications, both in social nets and media. 

2. Why did you want to work for KFC?

At the beginning of my career I was just an ambitious and intelligent PR specialist who wanted to acquire professional skills to achieve career success while working for a world-famous chicken brand. I saw KFC as an attractive employer with a unique history that was rapidly growing, developing and implementing new innovative solutions for the whole QSR market. KFC is a strong brand for consumers and a company that takes care of employees. I have a deep sense of belonging to the brand, and proud of representing the company in Russian & the CIS media sphere. 

3. How has your career grown since starting with the company?

My story with KFC started when I joined a partner PR agency in 2017. My duties were quite ordinary – pitching, media monitoring, reporting, media list development, etc. After a while, KFC became an important part of my life, and my passion for the brand resulted in promotion – I got a job offer to join the company as an in-house PR manager. 

I've been with the brand for 3.5 years, and I like it so much. My KFC story is full of achieved goals and challenges, and I can't imagine myself having a boring working day. When I joined KFC I knew that many great things were waiting for me ahead, and these dreams came true. I've already developed a number of strategic PR campaigns in Russia & the CIS, organised many media & bloggers events (incl. the tour to the USA in 2019), launched new products & initiatives. I do believe that many great things are yet to happen. 

4. What has been your favorite project to work on at KFC?

Actually, it's quite hard to decide which of the projects is my favourite because we have truly inspiring announcements almost every month. I'd say that I'm very enthusiastic about female leadership initiatives in Russia. This topic is very important for KFC, as far as 60% of our employees are women. The company itself makes a huge effort for women to be happy at work, and we also make our input from the communications side. Thus, in 2018 we launched a female leadership committee with the Association of Russian managers to address the gender equality problems in our business society. For the 2nd year in a row we've been supporting Woman Who Matters, the key event for women in Russia. On a day-to-day basis we create media content to promote our female corporate leaders.

One more thing to be mentioned is the key announcement of 2020 from my point of view – the launch of KFC's restaurant of the future in Moscow with a robo-hand and a biometric identification system for the payment and receipt of orders. We achieved a huge PR success – more than 200 unique stories published in top Russian and international media titles around the world, including USA, the UK, India, China, and many more. Our project has been shortlisted for the European Excellence Award 2020 in the "Launch" category.

5. Tell us a fun fact about yourself 

My friends call me “the mother of all dragons” because I have 2 hilarious dogs rescued from the shelter (and they actually respond to `Dracarys` command)