GISA Autumn Election 2024 Candidate Profiles: Arkoprabho Hazra for Communications Director

In conversation with Arkoprabho Hazra, MINT (Human Rights & Humanitarianism) 1st Year Student.

Q: Why are you interested in the role of Communications Director, and what unique perspective or skills would you bring to this position?

As someone who has been doing communications work for almost half a decade, this position was something that caught my eye immediately during our orientation with the GISA board, before coming to the Institute. Additionally, I believe that there is some scope to expand upon GISA’s current communication strategy, which if elected I would be happy to implement.

I appreciate the work done by my predecessors which has ensured that basic communications infrastructure at the Association is well maintained. Keeping this in mind, I shall first aim to build upon the current infrastructure but most importantly strive to leverage my digital communication expertise to boost GISA’s social media activity.

Beyond this, I believe communications is important for anyone building a career in policymaking and development, and with this perspective in mind, my vision is to create an ecosystem wherein the student body can be connected to industry leaders in communications and advocacy through workshops and seminars.

Q. How will your experiences as a student at the Institute shape your approach to the role of Communications Director?

Given I have just joined the Institute, it might be premature to answer this holistically, but in the past 1.5 months, I have understood that the biggest pain point for the student body has been the heavy influx of information. For this, the GISA is already in the process of conducting a survey that gathers information from the student body to understand their preferred mode of communication.

This survey will be crucial for the Communications Director to implement a strategy that can better streamline the consumption of information for the student body. However, I do understand the limitations of such streamlining and hope that I am able to do so to the best of my abilities. 

Q. Could you share any relevant experience in communications, social media management, or public relations that would help you excel in this role?

Before coming to the Institute, I was working with India’s Ministry of External Affairs as a communications consultant where I assisted the External Publicity and Public Diplomacy division with its traditional and digital media strategy. The holistic experiences at the Ministry across different communication priorities have been very important to building my current skillset in the field.

While my experiences have been more specialized in policy communications, I believe that skills are transferrable and can be implemented even in an educational setting. Thus, I can be sure to utilize my learnings across digital media, public relations and content curation to complement the role of Communications Director at GISA.

Q. What strategies would you implement to improve internal and external communication within the student association and with the broader student community?

My focus would be to continue keeping a cohesive and transparent communication system within GISA, and between GISA and the broader student community. Regular feedback loops and accessible meeting summaries are key for boosting internal communication practices which shall be done in coordination with the Administrative Director.

Externally, beyond my goal of an improved social media strategy, I am hoping to leverage GISA’s newsletter to provide consistent updates on the work of GISA and the student initiatives, and at the same time communicate events that might be crucial for student life in Geneva.

Finally, I shall aim to conduct quarterly surveys and town halls to provide the student body with a space which can be utilized for transparent conversation between GISA and the students. The results of these efforts will ensure that the student body’s needs and opinions are valued to drive communication strategies that best suit our community.

Q. How would you encourage more student engagement through communication channels? Can you give an example of a campaign or initiative you would propose?

It is vital to always keep engaging with the student body to better understand their concerns. I believe this is something that is not only the responsibility of the Communications Director but all offices within GISA. Having gone through the platforms of other candidates standing for different positions in the fall election, it is reassuring to see that many of them want to work on advocating student needs, and as the Communications Director I would strive to ensure that all channels of communication are open to the student body, to convey their issues, if required even in an anonymous manner.

In terms of my own campaign, I hope to boost student engagement by organizing workshops and seminars related to advocacy and communications. Additionally, I have also seen other candidates proposing such workshops for different thematic and functional topics. Thus, I hope to work with other GISA members and the Events Coordinator to make these a reality, which I hope will become a platform for greater student body engagement. 

Q. How do you plan to collaborate with other departments of the Student Association to ensure consistent messaging and effective outreach?

Communications is central to the various offices of the student association, thus I hope to ensure that the work of the various offices are communicated to the student body, especially things such as minutes of weekly GISA meetings, reports and other necessary documents.

 

Q. How would you handle a situation where misinformation or a miscommunication arises within the student community?

Misinformation is probably the biggest nightmare for any communications professional and it needs to be handled with great care. The most important thing during such situations is to be as transparent as possible with the student body. For this, a town hall with the student body and the board is critical so that all questions relating to the said misinformation can be answered elaborately. Furthermore, an official statement from the board will also ease out any confusion, hence it would be crucial.

Once this is done, it might be important to find out the source of misinformation, to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again.

Q. If elected, what would be your primary goal as Communications Director?

As mentioned in my election platform, I have a lot of plans that I look forward to implementing, however, my priority is to make GISA’s social media more active and engaging. For this, I shall aim to create a social media calendar that incorporates different social media campaigns which can be disseminated on a weekly and/or monthly basis.

Additionally, for social media, it is also important to create a consistent brand guideline that can help us streamline GISA’s visual presentation across social media.

Apart from this, I am also eager to collaborate with the communication teams of various student initiatives to better understand their needs for visibility and share best practices with each other.

Editor’s Note: Responses have been edited for clarity.

Voting is open now and will close on October 10 at 10:30 a.m. We encourage all students to participate and cast their votes!