Christian Bond has begun his first year as Seattle Pacific University’s new assistant athletic director for communications following the retirement of former director Dan Lepse. As the new AADC, Bond is responsible for public relations and announcements between the athletic department, SPU, and the general public.

“I basically maintain the website and the social media, like all the Instagram accounts and the Twitter account,” Bond explained. “But I wanted to take a new approach. Before all the accounts for the different teams have been kind of independent, which is not bad, but I’m trying to make everything more uniform – trying to be consistent, be aware of what we’re posting and try to post every day instead of intermittently.”

SPU’s athletic director Jackson Stava says Bond is a joy to have on the team and continues to impress him with his vision and understanding of the program and its needs.

“Christian is deeply connected here in the northwest, has ties to a lot of different schools, and so that mix of experiences has helped him assimilate really well into the role that he has. It’s been fun to see him try to tackle all the different projects that he’s taken up to this point,” Stava said. “I’ve been really impressed with the way that he’s seamlessly been able to not only change a lot of our social media graphics and the way that we’re graphically represented on the website but also the way that he’s engaged our coaches and tried to make their product better so that we can he can help in recruiting.”

Bond has been heavily involved in student athletics since his college years at Pacific Lutheran University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in communications in 2018. While attending PLU, Bond worked as a student assistant in the athletics communications office and created Half Athlete Radio, a PLU-related sports talk show that still runs today.

“I went to Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma from 2014 to 2018 … and [then] I went to Central Washington where I got my Master’s in Athletic Administration in 2020 … I worked at Fresno Pacific as their assistant director and later on as their director of athletics communications for about a year,” Bond said.

During his time with the Sunbirds, Bond’s communications office earned the 2021 PacWest Sports Information Directors of the Year Award. After serving one year as CWU’s DAC, Bond made the move back to the Seattle area.

“It’s good to be back in the area I grew up in, and it’s exciting to be working at an institution with the standards and quality of SPU,” Bond said. “Everyone’s been incredibly welcoming. They’ve all been a great help whenever I needed it. The coaches are great. They’re good about making time when I need to reach out to them or any of their athletes. It’s really a great environment, and I hope to keep building on these relationships as I move forward in the years to come.”

Despite only having a few months under his belt at SPU, Bond has made a significant impression on the athletics program and hopes his vision for media representation not only does justice to the coaches and athletes but attracts more attention from the student body.

“The main goal for any year is to highlight and celebrate the accomplishments of student-athletes and to shed light on all their hard work and accomplishments using every media we can,” Bond said.