Bernadette Toye-Hale
Director of Marketing and Recruitment
Owensboro Community & Technical College
Owensboro, KY
After 23 years with Owensboro Community & Technical College (OCTC), Bernadette Toye-Hale brings strategic vision, tireless efforts and data-driven decision making to her role as director of marketing & recruitment.
Toye-Hale’s keen eye for emerging trends allows OCTC to facilitate authentic relationships with target audiences. She embraces cutting-edge marketing techniques, such as immersive storytelling, interactive videos and personalized content experiences.
Toye-Hale has been instrumental in executing the college’s digital enrollment program, which resulted in over 38,000 prospective student leads for the entire college system in Kentucky. Initially, there was resistance from many of the colleges to allocate the majority of their marketing budgets to lower-funnel digital efforts, but Toye-Hale provided the leadership to bring all colleges on board.
She is the primary driver and leader of Kentucky’s systemwide marketing director peer team, where she serves as chairperson. This team consists of marketing staff from each of the system’s 16 colleges, plus system office, and develops and executes all systemwide marketing strategies, branding, creative, PR, and crisis communications.
Through Toye-Hale’s extraordinary efforts of increased public relations and marketing, OCTC has received the Messenger Inquirer Reader’s Choice Platinum Award for the Best Higher Education Institution in the region for four straight years.
“Bernie sees in others what they don’t see themselves,” writes Katie Powers, OCTC marketing coordinator for recruitment, in Toye-Hale’s nomination form. “She aims to bring out the leader in all of us.”
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