Nick Cowling

For more than 20 years, Nick has been crafting corporate strategies for clients and advising senior executives on maximizing their communications to deliver business results.

As Global President at Citizen Relations, Nick is responsible for providing vision and strategic oversight for a growing client portfolio of clients across nine offices North America, Europe and Asia, focused on corporate communications, consumer marketing, healthcare, technology and public affairs.

Today, Nick is pushing Citizen Relations yet again to maintain its leadership by introducing the most sophisticated data and measurement solutions in the industry, breaking the mold with influencer marketing with a proven and innovative offering and world class creative ideation built to drive conversation that can change behaviour, attitude or deliver actions and transactions.

Before joining Citizen Relations, Nick was responsible for public relations, internal communications, community affairs and the sustainability (marketing and operations) for The Home Depot Canada. Among his achievements, he successfully made its president one of the most famous executives in the country, redesigned the $10 million dollar community investment portfolio, established the largest corporate volunteer program in the country (40,000 hours/year), created and launched The Home Depot Canada Foundation, launched Canada’s first environmental retail brand and established $50 million dollars worth of energy efficiency contracts with utilities across Canada.

He has a wide range of industry and sector experience including sustainability, healthcare, financial services, energy, non-profit and retail. Nick sits on the Board for MATCH International Women’s Fund and has just helped them create its next evolution -- the Equality Fund (EF). The launch of EF at Women Deliver (June) 2019 was coupled with the award of $300 million from the Government of Canada, making Canada the largest funder of women’s rights in the world.

Nick has recently joined the board of The Natural Step, an environmental NGO that works with corporate Canada to establish innovations in environmental issue areas and establish advocacy for key environmental opportunities, such as creating and leading the Circular Economy Leadership Coalition, which includes the largest retailers, manufacturers and producers in the country.