Episode 8 features Purvy Patel, who originally started her career in the corporate world and moved to the charity sector, leveraging her transferable skills. She discusses the challenges of sector transitions, including budget constraints and the need for more creative communications.

Purvy tells us about working for Age UK and Age UK Hillingdon, Harrow and Brent, highlighting the differences in managing comms for a local charity versus a national one, including the need to balance the books, secure funding and tailor services to the local community.

Episode 7 of the Comms Collective features another international colleague, Mary Ann Llanza, with 30 years of experience. Mary Ann talks about the satisfaction of seeing direct community impact and how successful campaigns require authentic, community-led communication.

Mary Ann’s journey began as a writer and journalist, then led to impactful campaigns on violence against women and disaster risk reduction in disaster-prone countries, and now to a climate movement to protect our forests. She tells us how she has changed her leadership style to empower her team, learned to say no, and protected her team from non-critical pressure.

It was wonderful to chat with Mary Ann and hear about her calm approach to stressful situations.

Episode 6 of the Comms Collective Podcast delves into the humanitarian world with Ka Man Parkinson, Communications and Marketing Lead for the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, with host Vishnee Sauntoo.

Ka Man explains how she works hard to understand her audience, the humanitarian field teams who are time-poor, lack good Wi-Fi, and work in very stressful conditions. The HLA brings learning to the sector through their digital platform, Kaya.

Ka Man tells us about a brilliant piece of research she conducted on the use of AI and the report and lessons learned from it. She also manages a podcast, so she could definitely have some learnings I can use.