This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Leeds Beckett University Public Relations and Strategic Communications graduate Anjana Athanikar to see what she’s been up to since graduating from the Masters PR course last year.
Anajana pictured above
Anajana is a passionate, creative social media and digital marketing professional. Her experience in PR and passion for the industry is inspiring, as I am looking to go down a similar path to her. She has over two years experience in corporate media and agency marketing. She prides herself in her ability to take initiative and is proud of her increase in social media and digital skills, from working in fast-paced environments managing social media channels and websites.
Anjana’s journey to PR started from doing her undergraduate in English at University of Pune, India – her home country. It was then she started working for multinational companies in their communication departments, she can speak an impressive four languages: English, Hindi, Marathi and German. After this experience in communications, she sought to expand her skills, so decided to come to Leeds, to study her master’s in Public Relations and Strategic Communications.
Pictured above: Leeds Beckett University City Campus building.
Like me, Anjana did not come from a PR background before joining the course. However, she told me that the modules on the course gave her an insight of the industry and in-depth knowledge as she got to work on real client projects – gaining industry experience. Similarly, to the brief I am currently working on, she worked on a client project with IKEA. This involved developing a PR campaign for them to encourage user interactions with the IKEA catalogue. During our interview, she described this as her best opportunity during the course and her greatest achievement. Another similar prospect she was involved in was with Leeds City Council, helping them increase employee engagement within the council. These live briefs helped her increase experience for her CV.
Alongside all the projects offered on the course Anjana got a work placement at an independent Yorkshire based PR consultancy AC-PR and Creative Boutique. This developed her skill set, and led her closer to her goal at the time, which was working in fashion and luxury PR. She helped provide cost effective media and PR services to start up and established companies, writing blogs, doing competitor analysis and forward planning.
Anjana shows great passion for many topics such as disaster and humanitarian relief, and has volunteered passionately for ‘Give India’ by spreading awareness of the campaigns. The charity gives to those in need and has a culture of transparency and credibility, ensuring your contribution reaches the organization and keeps you updated about its progress.
After expanding her skills and gaining an insight into a career in PR, Anjana then got a Social Media Executive job at AMT vehicle rental. Her role involved developing social media strategies to build and maximize their presence as well as launching campaigns and helping them maximize their effort of traditional PR. She also worked on developing original and compelling content to engage the company’s clients and created trends as well as working on digital engagement throughout her time there.
Anajana has continued in her PR career path and is currently working as a Social Media Executive for agencies in India. She has a great passion for working to reach out and engage the correct audiences, using the most up to date platforms and technologies in hope to achieve award winning results. It’s early stages in Anajana’s PR career since graduating and she has already become successful in her field. She hopes to successfully achieve her all-time goal to set up her own social media agency in India.
It was an absolute pleasure getting to know Anajana and her path to PR. Her passion and success for the subject is inspiring. I hope to follow in her footsteps and gain the skills required for a successful PR career.
