Aurea, Senior Content & Public Relations Strategist at the Rotary International

Aurea Santos has graduated in the one-year Master in Advanced Global Studies, in International development track. >She is Senior Content & Public Relations Strategist at the Rotary International in Brazil. 

What is your role and main responsibilities? 

I am a Senior Content & Public Relations Strategist at Rotary International in Brazil. Rotary is a humanitarian organization that is mostly known for its clubs. It gives grants to hundreds of development projects around the world, in areas such as health, environment, and education, among others. My role is to promote Rotary‘s work on our social media channels, blog, website, and also to the media in Brazil. I’m responsible for all content in Portuguese on our official channels and I provide communications support to volunteers who are on the field helping their communities. When it’s needed, I also manage image crises in Brazil and Latin American countries.

How did you secure this role? 

I saw the job post on LinkedIn. I’ve built my career in Journalism and, when I did my master’s in Development Practice, all I wanted was to get a job in which I could merge the two areas. When I spotted a communications position to work on international development, I knew that job was for me.

What is the most fascinating and/or surprising aspect at your role?

What fascinates me about my job is being sure that I’m doing something meaningful. I see this when we promote polio vaccination campaigns, for example. Rotary has been working to eradicate polio since the 1980’s, and it has been so successful that the disease is only endemic in two countries nowadays. So, I’m promoting important causes such as vaccination, child education, environmental protection, and others. This gives me a real sense of purpose.

How did your PSIA experience help you with the role? 

The knowledge I acquired in my master’s is the basis of my current work. If I’m able to understand the complexity of development projects, it’s due to my studies in PSIA. I deal on a daily basis with subjects I studied during my course, such as financing projects, donors, political and cultural considerations of an intervention, monitoring and evaluation, just to mention a few. All I learned at PSIA helps me to handle such complex subjects.

What advice would you give to others? 

My advice goes especially to other MAGS students and it’s a bit of a rogue one. Don’t focus too much on your grades, focus on what you are learning. I’m not saying that having good grades is not important, it’s great, but there are many factors, such as language and writing style that may prevent you from having 16s or 17s. My first language is Portuguese, and I studied Journalism (in which you don’t learn the typical academic style). Thus, writing academic texts in English was extremely challenging for me. Then, I did not get the best grades, but I learned a lot and got all the knowledge I could from my classes, my professors, and my colleagues. All of this made me secure the job I wanted and I’m really thriving on it. That is what really matters after you graduate.

• More about the Master in Advanced Global Studies