District Winners

2023 District 5 Rising Star

Lisé Freking
Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications
Dakota County Technical College/Inver Hills Community College
Inver Grove Heights, MN

Lisé Freking – the director of strategic marketing and communications at Dakota County Technical College and Inver Hills Community College in Minnesota – is responsible for the strategic direction of marketing, branding and communications for both colleges. She also serves as the colleges’ public information officer, leading the marketing, public relations, graphic design and web development teams.

Overseeing so much at two separate institutions, Freking approaches her work with a “build once/deploy twice” mindset, taking advantage of opportunities to create dual college advertising (which saves money in the process), create shared assets and drive toward additional joint opportunities across broader departments. 

Freking recently led efforts to ensure that college campus monitors were supported by a solid content strategy. She created campus digital signage posting guidelines and best practices documents for staff and faculty. When she saw that other campuses across the country lacked similar guidelines, she also shared the documents with NCMPR’s listserv.  

Freking directly supports the Office of the President and contributes strategic insights, project management, leadership skills and communications support to a variety of departments. She developed marketing strategies to support the colleges’ strategic plans, enrollment plans, DEI website updates and guided learning pathway proposals. She also manages crisis and weather communication strategies, creating templates for efficient, effective and timely campus communications. Her marketing tactic budget cheat sheets reflect free and paid tactics available to program faculty and staff when they request marketing support.

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