In this conversation, Anke Schmidt shares her journey into public relations, beginning with an internship in France that sparked her interest in intercultural communication. She discusses her extensive experience working in Asia-Pacific as a communications leader for BASF, highlighting the cultural challenges and strategies she developed to navigate complex international environments. Throughout the discussion, Anke provides insights on indirect influence, managing global teams, and the importance of understanding cultural contexts when implementing communication strategies. She also reflects on her involvement with Global Women in PR Germany and the importance of balancing career ambitions with family priorities.
Takeaways
- Anke's career in PR began through intercultural experiences between French and German business practices
- Cultural adaptation requires both resilience and strategic thinking about indirect influence
- Understanding power dynamics across cultures is essential for effective global communication
- When managing global teams, consider resource disparities between headquarters and regional offices
- Successful international PR requires flexible approaches to planning and implementation
- Indirect influence strategies can be effective in hierarchical organizational cultures
- Building community among global team members helps overcome resource and expertise gaps
- Women need networks and visible role models in PR leadership positions
- Family should remain a priority even amid successful career development
- Effective intercultural communication often comes through lived experience rather than just training
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In this conversation, Anke Schmidt shares her journey into public relations, beginning with an internship in France that sparked her interest in intercultural communication. She discusses her extensive experience working in Asia-Pacific as a communications leader for BASF, highlighting the cultural challenges and strategies she developed to navigate complex international environments. Throughout the discussion, Anke provides insights on indirect influence, managing global teams, and the importance of understanding cultural contexts when implementing communication strategies. She also reflects on her involvement with Global Women in PR Germany and the importance of balancing career ambitions with family priorities.
Takeaways
- Anke's career in PR began through intercultural experiences between French and German business practices
- Cultural adaptation requires both resilience and strategic thinking about indirect influence
- Understanding power dynamics across cultures is essential for effective global communication
- When managing global teams, consider resource disparities between headquarters and regional offices
- Successful international PR requires flexible approaches to planning and implementation
- Indirect influence strategies can be effective in hierarchical organizational cultures
- Building community among global team members helps overcome resource and expertise gaps
- Women need networks and visible role models in PR leadership positions
- Family should remain a priority even amid successful career development
- Effective intercultural communication often comes through lived experience rather than just training
From the PR fields of activity, corporate communications is still the most visible and praised, as is media relations. But it is really non-profit organizations that have been innovating in the field and they have been making an impact, in the world and on the profession. The reasons for NGO communications success are multiple: from the way their values resonate with those of the people joining them, from their generally assumed lack of resources or from the expectation that they do different and that they do better.
For a communicator, the move from corporate to non-profit is still unusual. Doing it out of passion is almost unheard of.
Which is why we’re heading to Estonia today (virtually, as usual) to meet with Anneli Ohvril, the CEO of Let’s Do it World, an NGO focused on engaging leaders and organizations around the world on environmental issues. World Cleanup Day is their biggest event, one day, uniting millions of people around the world with the mission to clean places around them – parks, walkways, lakes… in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, 11 million people joined the day - some outdoors, some online, some alone and some socially distanced.
So today we’ll speak about purpose and values and passion for a cleaner future and cleaner PR.
Women in PR
In this conversation, Anke Schmidt shares her journey into public relations, beginning with an internship in France that sparked her interest in intercultural communication. She discusses her extensive experience working in Asia-Pacific as a communications leader for BASF, highlighting the cultural challenges and strategies she developed to navigate complex international environments. Throughout the discussion, Anke provides insights on indirect influence, managing global teams, and the importance of understanding cultural contexts when implementing communication strategies. She also reflects on her involvement with Global Women in PR Germany and the importance of balancing career ambitions with family priorities.
Takeaways
- Anke's career in PR began through intercultural experiences between French and German business practices
- Cultural adaptation requires both resilience and strategic thinking about indirect influence
- Understanding power dynamics across cultures is essential for effective global communication
- When managing global teams, consider resource disparities between headquarters and regional offices
- Successful international PR requires flexible approaches to planning and implementation
- Indirect influence strategies can be effective in hierarchical organizational cultures
- Building community among global team members helps overcome resource and expertise gaps
- Women need networks and visible role models in PR leadership positions
- Family should remain a priority even amid successful career development
- Effective intercultural communication often comes through lived experience rather than just training
