Columbia Ward

Columbia Ward is a Social Community Manager at Weber Shandwick, where she supports brands through online community engagement, social listening, and digital communication strategy. In her role, she helps manage and strengthen relationships between brands and their audiences across social media platforms by monitoring conversations, identifying trends, maintaining brand voice, and creating meaningful audience interactions. Her work focuses on building authentic online communities while helping brands stay culturally relevant in a fast-moving digital landscape.

Beyond her agency work, Ward is also a content creator and UGC creator who produces lifestyle and social media-focused content centered around everyday life, wellness, beauty, and work-life balance. Through platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, she has built an engaged online audience by creating relatable content that blends storytelling, creativity, and authenticity. Her experience in content creation has led to collaborations with brands and invitations to create on-site content for restaurants, hotels, and businesses looking to connect with audiences through organic social media storytelling and user-generated content campaigns.

Ward is passionate about the evolving relationship between brands, creators, and online communities, and enjoys combining both her professional agency experience and creator perspective to better understand audience engagement and digital communication trends.

She remains actively connected to the communications industry through mentorship, networking, and student engagement opportunities. During her time at Oakland University, she served as President and Social Media Coordinator of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) at OU chapter, where she helped organize networking events and professional development opportunities that connected students with industry professionals throughout Metro Detroit.

Ward earned her B.A. in Public Relations and Strategic Communication with a minor in Journalism from Oakland University in May 2025.