Candid conversation with Sumathi Chari: Re-writing the narrative

Join me, your host, Sanila Samuel on yet another engaging and interesting conversation. This time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sumathi Chari – we were at school together! 

Sumathi is Director & Senior Partner at PRHUB. A Brand consultant & integrated communication specialist with close to two decades of experience, Sumathi works  with senior leadership at organisations across diverse domains, to help them devise their brand building strategy and execution roadmap. She has led award winning campaigns across areas of communication including PR, marcomm, internal communication and influencer outreach. She leads client delivery, marketing and branding and talent development at PRHUB, besides closely working on the firm's future direction and growth. She was recognised as among the top 50 women leaders in Sales & Marketing by the Vedica Women's Alliance- V (WA) 50 in 2022. Sumathi has also been part of the Emerging Leaders' Commitee at IPREX (third largest global body of independent PR firms across countries) as part of which, she collaborated with agency leaders across regions to put together a holistic and unique curriculum for IPREX Academy, designed to enable agencies groom future business leaders for the industry. 

Sumathi is a strong advocate and an active voice for retaining women in the workforce and growing in their careers. She has been working towards enabling women return back to work or continue to work and grow to senior and leadership roles at PRHUB. She believes losing quality women talent to personal reasons, is a key challenge in the PR and communication industry, that thrives on a large number of them at entry and junior-mid levels. Being a brand and communications specialist, she is also working on changing the narratives and the brand building approach that women professionals and business leaders take.She is part of leading communities working in the area of empowering and equipping women.

We talked about Sumathi’s career journey, her interest in advertising and PR from a young age inspired by her mother and how she was determined to grow her career in an area she is truly passionate about. I learnt much more about PR and brand building than I ever knew about. 

 Sumathi drew some interesting parallels between her work in brand building for companies which involves building the right narrative. Her point about needing to re-write the narrative around women in the workplace struck home – too often we get caught up in the ‘supermom’ and ‘multi-taster’ tag which adds a ton of stress.   

 She also brought up a great point about how important it will be to recognize what each of your team members need to stay engaged at work instead of standardizing options for flexibility. 

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