Across continents, communicators are being asked to do more than manage reputations; but to navigate geopolitical crises, translate science for public understanding, build societal resilience, and shape narratives in markets that are fractured, multilingual, and deeply nuanced.
This evolution was illustrated through a dialogue featuring communications leaders from Armenia, Ukraine, Ghana, Switzerland and South Africa at the World Communications Forum’s PR Summit in Davos.
Though their contexts ranged from mining to science and digital access to tech, their shared insight was clear: the future of PR lies not in spin, but in systems-thinking, empathy, and ethical storytelling.
Tatevik Simonian, founder of Spring PR and moderator of the session, opened the discussion by challenging communicators to rethink whose stories we’re telling, how we’re telling them, and who gets to shape the narrative.
Speaking from her Armenian context, she highlights the complexity of operating in a region where history, innovation, and vulnerability coexist.
“Communications must decentralise power,” she says. “We have to localise meaning without losing strategic clarity. And in every message, ask: who is this really for, and who is missing?”
Her work across science, tech and diplomacy reflects a larger truth: the communicator’s role is no longer neutral, it’s ethical, political, and profoundly human.
In Ukraine, communication has become a form of national resilience. Viroslava Novosylna, CEO of Slova Tech PR, spoke of how communicators in her region have become natural crisis managers, moving fast, taking ownership, and reframing defence innovation not through the lens of war, but through the ingenuity of Ukrainian engineers.
“It’s no longer just about raising awareness,” she says, “It’s about shifting minds. Telling the stories of our people, our scientists, our technologists, it’s about showing what Ukraine can contribute to the world.”
This emphasis on shaping perception, without glorifying trauma, underscores a broader shift, of public relations that is less about what’s being said and more about how it’s being understood, especially in regions where narratives are politically charged and reputations can be existentially vulnerable.
At Cern in Switzerland, Chetna Krishna is immersed in another kind of translation, making particle physics relevant to the public and accessible to policymakers.
She works within one of the world’s most complex scientific ecosystems, where 27-kilometre accelerators tunnel beneath the surface and Nobel-winning breakthroughs are debated over coffee in the cafeteria.
Her challenge isn’t simplification, it’s significance. “Scientists value precision,” she notes. “But trust depends on relatability.”
Cern’s recent pivot toward immersive public education and open-access exhibits shows how even the most technical institutions recognise the need for emotional resonance and narrative fluency.
In South Africa and Ghana, the panel turned to the deeply textured terrain of multilingual, multi-ethnic audiences, where language isn’t just a medium; it’s a marker of trust and legitimacy.
As part of the panel, I reflected on how influence moves differently in culturally complex markets—particularly in South Africa. In some environments, formal authority isn’t the only currency.
Messages gain traction when they honour the rhythm of the community. Sometimes, that means elevating local or traditional voices before corporate ones.
Trust isn’t built solely through what’s said, it’s built through knowing whose voice carries weight, when, and why. Cultural intelligence isn’t a courtesy or soft skill; it’s a strategic capability. Without it, the message may be right, but it won’t land.
Thabisile Phumo, executive vice president of stakeholder relations at Sibanye-Stillwater, reflects on how the mining sector, long criticised for extraction without equity, is shifting towards a shared value model that recognises communities as co-owners of the value chain.
That mindset shift is key to building trust.
“When people see themselves in the story of the product, the phone in their hand, the metal in their car, they stop seeing mining as something done to them and start seeing it as something they’re part of.”
In Ghana, Kobi Osisiadan-Bekoe, director of corporate affairs at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, addresses the gap between digital access and empowerment.
“We often assume giving people tools is enough,” she says. “But access doesn’t automatically translate to impact. you have to show people why it matters.”
Her team takes technology into everyday spaces, churches, markets, and schools and connects it to real-life needs.
With limited infrastructure, local facilitators and storytelling are essential: “The message lands when it’s human, not abstract.”
Artificial intelligence, unsurprisingly, hovered over every dimension of the discussion, less as a shiny solution and more as a call for intentionality, with consensus that AI is not the threat but poor inputs, lack of ethics, and misuse are.
Krishna offers a practical reminder: “Even running a large AI model has an environmental cost. Our job isn’t just to use tools, it’s to question them, understand them, and explain them transparently.”
Despite the differences in sector, audience, and region, the group closed with a quiet agreement on what remains timeless.
From refugee zones to rural classrooms, global labs to boardrooms, the role of the communicator has never been more layered. PR, they said, won’t disappear. It will evolve.
Perhaps we’ll call ourselves trust architects or narrative strategists in a decade. But the core task remains, to help people understand the world, and each other, more clearly.
In a time when connection often feels fragile, that’s not a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity.
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