Nandita Lakshmanan is the chairperson and founder of The PRactice. Her biggest learning is “A clear conscience is the softest pillow and when in doubt, disclose.”
Nandita is a determined, influential, motivated woman who has great vision and perspective towards life. She was the fourth employee at Genesis when it started but following her vision, she worked her way up and started her own company named, The PRactice in 2000.
Over the past 25 years, Nandita has led a number of influential and noteworthy campaigns. She has also been focused on establishing a culture of continuous leadership through mentoring and coaching, fostering entrepreneurship, and exploring collaborations. She leads with the belief that an idea is only as good as its execution, thereby maintaining a close eye on implementation and the last mile.
Nandita believes that PR professionals need to be seen as trusted advisors and not merely as implementers. PR can secure meetings with ministries, advise the client what to say, follow up, but there is a line. In India, as in many parts of the world, that fine line between influencing, advocacy and deal making is often trespassed.”
Nandita has served on various prestigious juries to determine excellence in Public Relations, including the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for the PR category; the SABRE Awards India, among others. She is an alumnus of the Fortune/US State Department Global Mentorship Program, where she won the Exxon Mobil-Vital Voices grant for an idea titled “Integrity Decoded”. In 2014, she won the SABRE Individual Award for her contribution to the PR business in India. She was recognized among India’s top 10 women in Public Relations by Reputation Today in 2016.
Her advice for budding PR professionals is: The Public Relations professional today has to be comfortable with technology. Skills in analytics, managing and using digital tools, design, content development will soon be must-haves and not “good-to-have”. With the environment being volatile and dynamic, a sense of ethics, fearlessness to tread new ground, curiosity and an innate desire to learn are critical. Finally, look at Public Relations as a career and not merely a job.
Interesting Read –
– Nancy Rathore
Nancy is a student of School Of COmmunications and REputations (SCoRe) – Class of 2022 – Spring Batch. She has done BBA from Jagran lake city university Bhopal. She is born and brought up at Bhopal. She can be reached on Twitter as @NancyRathore_13 and on LinkedIn as Nancy Rathore
