I have one of the best jobs imaginable: I lead the talent function at Ketchum, connecting and engaging with amazing people and incredible teams across continents.
In this role, I’ve seen that talent increasingly joins us because of the international scope of our work and the chance to build our brand and enhance our partnerships with some of the world’s greatest clients. To further nurture our professionals’ appetite for global exposure, we created the Ketchum Global Scholar program. The program provides our talent with the extraordinary opportunity to travel to other Ketchum offices around the globe to import and export knowledge, experience new cultures and build enduring networks and relationships.
Our scholars are selected through a rigorous process from a pool of international applicants and, in this most recent period, over 30 of our brightest and best will crisscross the globe. The journeys of the current crop will take them to offices in Seoul, Singapore, San Francisco and Shanghai, to name a few, as you can see in the map below.
As a firm believer that world travel is the best type of education, I’ve noticed a number of ways this inter-office experience has benefited our people and, in turn, made Ketchum a more nimble and dynamic agency for our clients:
1. The ability to communicate on a global scale – a prerequisite for the leaders of tomorrow (click to tweet)
2. A more dynamic individual with a deeper creative and cultural understanding of what inspires and attracts consumers or stakeholders to gravitate toward a product or service
3. A stronger internal network of colleagues, which leads to a better understanding of both the thought-leaders and talent within the firm
4. An intellectual renewal allowing the professional to bring fresh insights back to their existing client work
What stood out among the numerous applications were a number of shared qualities: a passion for collaborative learning, a belief in forging connections and a commitment to evolving an understanding of other cultures, underscored with a clear sense of business purpose.
These qualities make me as excited about the future of integrated communications as I am about its ever-changing present, and about the supportive, global culture at Ketchum that underlies programs like these. As they travel, we will continue to share our scholars’ journeys here on the blog and across social media (follow the action with the hashtag #KetchumScholar) – we hope you’ll join us!
