When I left Fujairah for university in Dubai, I thought moving to a bigger city would be my biggest adjustment. I was wrong, but also right in a way. What I had yet to know is that the true culture shock would come four years later. 

This happened in 2017/2018 when I decided to enter the beautiful, head-spinning, exhilarating world of public relations. It was an industry that I long aspired to be part of with its glamour from the outside. What I discovered was it often feels like a triathlon you didn’t train for.

Since then, I’ve spent years in many agencies and one in-house role, most recently leading marketing and communications at Gates Hospitality before returning to agency life as a Senior PR Manager. I’ve managed teams, handled crises, survived openings, chased journalists, and learned more about people than any degree could ever teach me. So, in classic PR fashion, here’s a feature-worthy breakdown of what I really wish someone had told me before starting a career in communications; especially as a Black woman raised between Kuwait and Fujairah. I have spent nearly 10 years navigating an industry where “the only one” is a title you quietly inherit before you ever earn one.     

1. Your background is intel, not baggage

Growing up in Kuwait and Fujairah before stepping into Dubai’s fast-paced PR ecosystem meant I didn’t enter the industry with the same “city polish” many seemed to have. For a while, I treated my multicultural upbringing like an odd accessory—something I carried but didn’t display for fear of being pitied.

Little did I know: those experiences are a goldmine.

Understanding diverse communities, cultures, and values makes you a better storyteller, a sharper strategist, and the kind of PR professional who can spot the gap in a market before anyone else does. When you’ve lived in multiple social worlds, you automatically understand audiences beyond the surface.

Lesson: the thing that makes you “different” is the thing that makes you unforgettable so use it.

2. PR looks glamorous… until you actually do it

Let’s get this out of the way: if you’re entering PR for the events, the openings, or the free gifts, trips and parties, “congratulations, you played yourself” as wise poet DJ Khaled said.

PR is:

- Writing crisis statements at 7 AM

- Convincing someone that yes, visibility does require a budget

- Responding to messages that begin with “quick question” (spoiler: it’s not quick)

- Explaining why keeping your team in cc is important to junior team members to ensure hard work is visible to management

- Rebooting your personality between people, emails and WhatsApps like a human PowerPoint deck

The glitz is real, but the grind is louder.

Lesson: invest in caffeine early and emotional resilience often.

3. Being a Black woman in PR means playing the game on expert mode

Representation in communications is improving, but let’s not pretend we’re there yet. Being the only Black woman in the room is a familiar role for me. Some days empowering, some days exhausting, and some days like starring in your own documentary titled “Microaggressions I Did Not Ask For.” You learn quickly how to read a room, adjust your tone, and assert your expertise without being labelled “too much” or “intense.” You practise diplomacy like it’s a martial art. In the process, you build a level of emotional intelligence that becomes one of your strongest professional assets.

Lesson: your presence is powerful even when the industry forgets to say it out loud.

4. Agency and in-house are different planets. Make sure to visit both

Agency life teaches you speed, adaptability, and how to brainstorm while half-asleep.   Your Google Calendar becomes a war zone. Your brain becomes multilingual in “client responsiveness.”

Then there’s in-house where you finally understand how a brand works from the inside. You see the operational heartbeat, the numbers, the expectations directly from stakeholders, decisions that make or break a concept. You stop pitching ideas that “look nice” and start pitching ideas that actually fit. Switching back to agency life with in-house experience feels like levelling up. Suddenly you speak fluent “client,” and that changes everything.

Lesson: if you can survive both worlds, you can survive anything.

5. The job is relationships but your career is your reputation

Everyone told me PR was about who you know. True. However, what they didn’t tell me is that longevity in PR is about who trusts you. Your emails, your follow-through, your tone under pressure, how you treat assistants versus editors; people remember all of it. The region’s media and communications community is small; your name travels faster than your pitch email.

Lesson: your reputation communicates what your network can’t.

6. You don’t have to fit the PR archetype so feel free to rewrite it

There’s a stereotype of what a “PR girl” looks and acts like. I am… not that. And it took me years to realise I didn’t have to be.

As a third-culture black woman navigating an industry built on appearances and impressions, I learned that authenticity is an asset. You can show up as yourself and still win. You can lead teams without developing a whole new persona. You can be strategic, soft-spoken, analytical, bold, funny, firm – really any mix of what your strengths are. 

Lesson: you don’t need to match the room to own it.

In the end…PR has stretched me, challenged me, shaped me, and admittedly sent me spiraling into a crisis communications plan for my own sanity. What I am thankful for is that it has also given me purpose, community, and a career built on meaning and momentum. If I could go back and give my teenage self (the girl leaving Fujairah for Dubai, full of ambition and zero idea what was coming) one piece of advice, it would be this: You don’t need to know everything now. Just keep showing up. The story will write itself.