Talking for Trudeau keeps PR pro busy
Two days prior to our meeting, Amanda Alvaro was in Arizona on Camelback Mountain (a 21⁄ 2 hour hike!), an adventurous 5-year-old in tow.
Later that same week? New York City, where she and the PR firm she co-heads happened to be up for a marketing award (for a cannabis client!).
Squeezed in between — on Tuesday! — she found herself on a firefly-fast jaunt to Ottawa where, just in time for budget day, she was due to be on TV for hours, doling out commentary as one of the land’s most visible surrogates for the Liberal Party of Canada.
I actually caught her — by the skin of my teeth — that day, on her way to the airport, slotting in a rendezvous at L’Espresso, here in Toronto, on Bloor St. Two Americanos … coming right up!
“I’m going to need this,” she smiled, flashing a set of HD television-ready pearly whites and a gladdening tan.
Just another week in the life of this Carrie Underwood-like gal-about-town? Yeah, you could say so. Spinmeister, ardent traveller, businesswoman, and mother of three (all under 5): just any number of her chapeaux.
“SNC-Lavalin ruined my vacation,” the 40-year-old shrugged later with a teaspoon of irony, referring to the biggest Canadian political story in many a year — a Trudeaugovernment typhoon that has grown and grown, led to highprofile resignations, and become an obsession for a parliamentary press corps that had possibly been suffering from scandal-envy, when it comes to the daily series of cliffhangers stateside.
Originally, Alvaro explained, she and her family — on the hunt for sun — had planned to go to Arizona for two weeks. However, because of the fastdeveloping story and a need for her to be on the CBC neardaily — she’s been a regular on the show, Power & Politics, for the past six years — she had to chisel down her own vacay to only 41⁄
What she lost in downtime she has certainly made up for in face time in recent weeks. As a powerhouse publicist in this town (her company, Pomp & Circumstance, reps everything from Bacardi to eBay to Peloton) as well as a mainstay in social circles — she co-chaired the Canadian Art Gala last year, for instance — it was also a testament to how much politics remains that proverbial first love. Careful to say she has no formal paid role (with either the federal Liberals or their provincial counterpart), her preferred role now, she affirmed, is as “partisan pundit.”
“I like fighting on the front lines,” she adds — in fact, she’s so steeped in the electoral fray, as well as public policy, that, during the 2014 Ontario election, she “played” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath during the preparatory mock-debate with Kathleen Wynne. “For weeks, I walked around with NDP talking points and policies in my head,” she recalled, painting a pic of that one-performance acting gig!
How did she first get the political itch, I wondered? It is always interesting to me how people’s aptitudes are shaped. For Alvaro, it was definitely not around the dinner table. “We talked about hockey!” she told me, remembering her upbringing in London, Ont., with her siblings (her brother is now a firefighter; a sister, a makeup artist). “I don’t think my parents ever voted,” she added candidly.
But there was something about it all that spoke to her. She first got involved in student politics, local politics. She even remembers taking a trip to Toronto to do a guided tour of Queen’s Park, and thinking to herself: I want to be here. It would happen. An early job involved working on the mayoral campaign of Barbara Hall. Later, jumping into the provincial realm, she wound up in the office of then-educationminister Gerard Kennedy, where many of Alvaro’s most formative relationships were sketched, including one with Katie Telford; now chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Telford remains one of her closest friends.
As for how her own family helps prepare her for the long haul of defending the government, she said that her husband, Mark Pavan, assists in sharpening her arguments — if only because they don’t always agree. “Probably more conservative-leaning than I am,” she says of her financier spouse. Not always, but often. He is her “testing ground, ” Alvaro following up by saying, “I know if I can persuade him, I am doing pretty OK.”
Persuasion may be the name of the game, but being a woman in the pundit seat — especially now in a time when everyone has a bullhorn, cour- tesy of social media — means enduring some dark, misogynistic moments, of course: “I have been called every name in the book.” She mostly lets it roll off her back.
One emotional retreat, though, from that rough-andtumble world? The work she does with Artbound, a global non-profit she co-founded in 2009, and helps promote artistic programs and access to education in the developing world. Last year, she took her oldest, Asher, with her on one such mission to remote Nicaragua and it has inspired to organize a larger mom/kid charity-trip slated for 2020.
“People really discouraged me from taking him,” she said. “But I knew he would rise to the occasion! And he did. He put his little shovel in the ground … and he was making friends with local kids. It wasn’t a culture shock … it was a cultural infusion.” Well said, as always. And proof that there’s more to life than politics.