By Fatima Karmostaji
ABU DHABI – The third annual MEPRA Student Day was held at Zayed University’s Abu Dhabi campus on Monday, March 20.
Held in the Maria Auditorium of the Zayed University Library, MEPRA Day 2015 featured the contribution of communication professionals from various companies across the United Arab Emirates as well as university faculty.
An hour-long panel discussion titled “Media and Public Relations: Two Ends of the Same Spectrum” followed a talk by Fatema Al Khateeb, who is a MEPRA member and a communication officer at Mubadala in Abu Dhabi. Ms. Al Khateeb’s presentation focused on the six main ingredients in being successful in communication professions. Ms. Al Khateeb, who also is working on her master’s degree in communication at Zayed University, came up with these six trends after interviewing 45 public relations professionals with years of experience.
The first ingredient is attitude, she said. Having a positive attitude affects your work significantly.
The second ingredient is curiosity, she stated.
“The future belongs to the curious. If I want to learn 10 new things, I will ask 10 questions,” Ms. Al Khateeb said.
Ms. Al Khateeb said that having a questioning frame of mind is indispensable for PR practitioners. She said asking questions is an important element in learning and then succeeding in the professional world.
“Always ask why when you don’t understand why something,” she said. “No question is a stupid question, so always keep asking.”
One of the students attending the MEPRA Day event enjoyed hearing Ms. Al Khateeb’s comments about curiosity.
“I think curiosity is very important because when you’re curious, you’re going to have all of these things together,” said Nawkha AlHosani. “Curiosity gets you to places.”
The ingredient that is most important to Ms. Al Khateeb is passion because “if you find your passion, then everything else will fall into place,” the Mubadala employee and American University of Sharjah alumna said. “Passion is purpose,” she added.
One student said that Ms. Al Khateeb was right about the role of passion in one’s career.
“Passion is essential to any job that you take,” said Mashael Adel, a Zayed University communication student.
The other three ingredients Ms. Al Khateeb cited were ambition, adaptation and creativity.
After her talk, the panelists discussed the relationship between journalism and public relations. On the panel were Alex Malouf of Proctor & Gamble; Taryam Al Subaihi of TAQA (he’s also a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi); and Associate Professor David Bulla of Zayed University’s College of Communication and Media Sciences. Paul Lowman, another Zayed University communication professor, served as moderator.
Mr. Al Subaihi said there are two major gaps in communication in the UAE – one involving language and the other culture. He said there are too few Emiratis in both journalism and public relations, although the numbers have improved in the last few decades. He encouraged Zayed University students to go into both fields.
Dr. Bulla, who teaches storytelling at Zayed University Abu Dhabi and is a mass communication historian, emphasized that both journalism and PR are about knowledge and that students need to keep in mind the diverse population of the UAE.
“There is a constant debate about Arabic and English here,” he said, “but this is near-sighted. The truth is that Urdu and Hindi are probably the most spoken languages in the country, where 53 percent of the population is South Asian. We need to recognize that not everybody is old or young, male or female, rich or poor, Emirati or expat.”
The Middle East Public Relation Association was founded in 2001 in the UAE, and it is the region’s leading body for public relations professionals and students. This year’s event was organized by Dina Suliman, the student chapter president, and Inka Stever, the chapter adviser.
For more information about MEPRA, visit the website http://www.mepra.org.
This story was originally published on April 23, 2015. It was re-uploaded on Dec. 24, 2020.
