STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS · FOR COMMUNITY-FACING ORGANISATIONS
Being right isn’t the same as being heard
You know your work. I help you explain it in ways the people you serve can understand and use, even with a small or no communications team. When information is complex, and when things go wrong.
01 / EXPERTISE
How I can help
Ready before it matters
Any organisation can face a moment that tests public trust. When it happens, your team needs to be ready. I work with community-facing organisations, especially those with a small or no communications team, to prepare and practise, before it's real.
I've headed communications and media in hospitals, public health and a television network, handling crises in all three, along with disease outbreaks, earthquakes and other emergencies in health. I've also worked for two medical peak bodies, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) and the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT), and for Victoria's health department during the COVID-19 emergency response.
01
Communicating when things go wrong
Readiness, response and reputational risk.
Crises and emergencies
Communicable disease outbreaks, disaster communications and other emergencies. This includes community and stakeholder relations, spokesperson preparation, message development and dealing with media.
Readiness and Preparation · Simulated Exercises · Crisis, Emergency and Risk Communication
Issues management and media
Prepare before an issue breaks, so you can respond in a timely and responsible way. Depending on the issue, this links with crises and emergencies, AI incidents, or both.
Holding Statements · Spokesperson Decisions · Media Relations · Issues Management
AI incidents
Using artificial intelligence safely isn't just a technology issue. It's a human issue, and it demands layers of communication alongside the technical information, especially when things go wrong. I keep learning as AI changes, but the communication and crisis skills I bring come from decades of experience.
02
Communicating when information is complex
Science and health, risk and uncertainty, and cultural context.
Health and science communication
You have the evidence. I help you share it in ways your audiences and communities can understand and use.
Public Health · Health Promotion · Primary Health Care · Emergency Medicine · Chronic Disease and NCDs · Environmental Health
Stakeholder and community engagement
Genuine engagement with communities and stakeholders is often the missing link. It helps people see why good evidence matters to them, and builds trust along the way. Culturally grounded, two-way engagement that respects Indigenous and local protocols and spots risks early.
Cross-Cultural Engagement · Partnerships · Community Relations · Capability Development
ACROSS ALL OF THIS
Strategic communications and public affairs
Plans, reports and public information written with scrutiny in mind.
Executive and Policy Advice · Change Communication · Corporate Documents and Annual Reports
Training and coaching
For leaders, officials, experts, clinicians and lawyers, as well as communities and young people.
Public and Media Spokesperson Training · Science and Health Communication · Message Development · Crisis, Risk and Emergency Communication
Project and event management
End-to-end strategy, deployment and management for high-stakes programs, simulation exercises and international forums.
Program Management · Training Rollouts · Stakeholder Coordination · Workshops
02 / BACKGROUND
Experience across sectors and borders
I've lived and worked in Samoa, New Zealand and Australia, and spent time living in Malaysia, China, Thailand and Cambodia. I bring more than two decades of senior experience as an adviser, consultant and communications manager across public health, government, broadcasting and international emergency response. I've headed communications in hospitals, public health and free-to-air television.
Where I started
Freelance writing, then radio and TV news producing. It taught me to verify facts, write under pressure and anticipate how a story will land.
Science and health
Working alongside experts and spokespeople to explain scientific and medical information to the public and other professionals.
Across cultures
Remote Aboriginal, rural Māori and Pacific communities, where English is often a second, third or fourth language.
HEALTH EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, 2025
As part of the team at Australia's National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre.
May 2025 · Nukuʻalofa, Tonga
Project managed Tonga's first Public Health Emergency Operations Centre training and simulation exercise, with officials from health, borders, police and the military. Read more, opens LinkedIn in a new tab
In partnership with WHO Western Pacific Region (Fiji) and WHO Tonga, for the Tonga Ministry of Health
June 2025 · Darwin, Australia
Training, simulation and training-of-trainers workshop for participants from 14 Indo-Pacific countries.
In partnership with the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific
Sep–Oct 2025 · Bangkok, Thailand
Project managed WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) Outbreak Response Leadership Programme for senior public health experts from 16 nations. Read more, opens WHO's report in a new tab
In partnership with the WHO Regional Offices for South-East Asia and the Western Pacific
OTHER ROLES
Project manager, senior policy adviser, workforce trainer, research manager
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Communication Studies (Journalism), AUT, 2001
TESOL/TEFL Certificate, 2026
MEMBERSHIP
Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST)
Capability statement, proposal or CV available on request through the contact form.
03 / PRESENTATIONS
Conference and webinar presentations
- 6 June 2024Novotel Surfers Paradise, Queensland
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) National Yarning Circle for Elder Care Support Program.
Presentation: Northern Territory Training in Action.
- 11 November 2021Online
International Association for Public Participation (IAP2A) Webinar, Keep on Engaging: Learnings from the Pandemic Part 1.
Panel of engagement leads from the Australian health sector, with Nina Fromhold (Victorian Public Service), Amanda Stephinson (NSW Health) and Vienna Richards (Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of Northern Territory).
- 7 June 2017Hotel Melia, Sevilla, Spain
5th International Conference on Disaster Management and Human Health: Reducing Risk, Improving Outcomes.
Case Study Presentation, Emergency Risk Communication: Lessons from New Zealand's Major Earthquakes 2011–2016.
- 22–23 May 2017Jupiter Hotel, Gold Coast, Queensland
2017 Australian and New Zealand Disaster and Emergency Management Conference.
Presentation: Practical Lessons in Emergency and Risk Communications Post-Kaikoura and Other NZ Earthquakes.
Session Chair: Children and Trauma.
Ask about speaking at your event →
Writing
- 19 January 2017Online
“Late Recognition for Medical Pioneer”, for my former website, Unsung Science.
A biographical article on 18th-century Aberdeen doctor Alexander Gordon, an unsung figure in medical history. I documented how his groundbreaking insights met fierce resistance, and how recognition of his pioneering role in epidemiology and medical hygiene came late. His work came about 50 years before the famous findings of Ignaz Semmelweis, and before germ theory was widely accepted.
A copy is kept by the James Lind Library, opens in a new tab.
BEYOND WORK
Singing through the pandemic
Growing up in my family, at church and across Pacific culture, we sang to welcome, to celebrate, to farewell, to grieve and to give thanks. To this day, that remains an enduring tradition across many Pacific nations. It's one way that we come together, in good times and in hard times.
During my two years in Australia's COVID-19 emergency response, I sang with the ED Musos, a virtual choir of emergency department health care workers from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, joined on some songs by staff from the UK and USA. We never sang in the same room. Each of us recorded at home, alone or with family, outside our shifts, and the production wove our voices together. It brought real joy, and a way to sing through the sadness and loss felt around the world.
Credit: This joy project was the brainchild of the ever-thoughtful Dr Clare Skinner, specialist emergency physician and former President of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.
ABOUT
Why I do this work
I'm Vienna Senima Richards, a senior communications practitioner. For more than two decades I've worked in public health, hospitals, emergency response, government, broadcasting and community organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
Book a meeting , opens Cal.com in a new tab
Request a capability statement, proposal or CV
DUAL AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND CITIZEN
BORN IN SAMOA
SPECIALISING IN HEALTH AND SCIENCE COMMUNICATION, CRISIS AND RISK, ISSUES MANAGEMENT
COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA AND ENGAGEMENT
ADVISER · PRACTITIONER
NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA
01 / WHY I DO THIS WORK
A daughter of the Pacific
The places I’ve called home, under the Southern CrossThe Southern Cross is a group of bright stars seen across the Pacific, South-East Asia and southern China. It’s on the flags of Samoa, Australia and New Zealand.
I’ve always been drawn to work that helps people and organisations. I think that comes from my late mother. She helped others quietly, behind the scenes, and I grew up watching her.
I’ve spent most of my life in Australia and New Zealand, but I was born in Samoa and spent my early childhood there. I grew up in my parents’ coastal villages, surrounded by grandparents who loved us beyond measure. I’m a proud grandmother too now, and that makes all the difference in my world. It motivates me.
02 / WHAT GUIDES ME
Vision, purpose and mission
Vision
A world where we help each other be safe, informed and wise.
Purpose
To care, listen and learn, so people can close the gaps in understanding between them.
Mission
To help people build genuine connection and trustworthy communication, in everyday life and when it matters most.
03 / WHERE I STARTED
The thread through my work
I started out as a freelance writer three decades ago, before my communications career began. Before freelancing, in between raising a family, I worked a few times a year as a contract trainer at a hospital, and a market research interviewer. I wrote newspaper editorials and a chapter for a published book. Then I decided to deep dive into media writing, and completed a Bachelor of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology.
From there, I moved into a television newsroom. I learned to produce daily news and the early morning breakfast show, and to research consumer stories that came from complaints and disputes. I learned to find the heart of a story, the stuff that grabs you, and tell it simply, often against the clock.
On September 11, 2001, I was producing foreign news. That turned out to be a defining experience in my life. The images and sounds I edited and produced that day, and every day after, for national audiences seemed like a constant stream of anthrax attacks, massacres and ongoing wars. I don’t think that’s good for anybody’s heart and soul in the long term. So I guess you could say I lost all interest in television news producing soon after.
Since then, my skills and work have taken me into radio producing and editing, marketing university courses, and commercial business development in infrastructure and open space landscaping. It has taken me back into hospitals and public health, into education, into parliamentary and government work, and into television again, this time in communications management.
But the thread has always been the same: helping people understand what matters to them and building bridges that connect us to one another.
Whether it’s between people across cultures and languages, or between communities and the professionals trying to reach them, I often work at that intersection. It feels like home to me, if that makes sense. It’s what I’ve known my whole life, growing up in different cultural worlds.
04 / BETWEEN CULTURES
Working between cultures
More recently, I’ve worked in international development across 22 countries in the Indo-Pacific. I have lived and worked between cultures my whole life. Each person and culture sees the world in their own way. But I love that. It’s rich and it makes life interesting.
Helping people find common ground, understand each other, and feel respected and loved is a resource multiplier. It can make the biggest difference to families, to a community, and even to a nation. It’s some of the most rewarding work I know. But it doesn’t happen easily. It doesn’t necessarily come together at first. It takes persistence, determination and a lot of courage. But that’s no reason to give up because when it all comes together, it makes a real difference to the people you serve and the people whose lives you want to impact for good.
05 / HEALTH AND EMERGENCIES
Health, emergencies and trust
Much of my health work has been in emergencies, including disease outbreaks and earthquakes. I’ve helped experts and officials explain complex information to people without a medical or science background.
I’ve also headed communications in hospitals and public health. See my background →
I’ve worked on multiple communicable disease outbreaks in the region with public health and medical teams over the last two decades. They include COVID-19, H1N1 influenza, measles and pertussis. So I know how fast infectious diseases can spread and how much trust and clear information matter.
In 2018, I was in Samoa as a freelance journalist for Pacific media. I was reporting on what followed the deaths of two babies after a medical error during vaccination, and I watched trust in vaccines fall. The next year, a measles epidemic swept through Samoa, the country where I was born, and misinformation spread like wildfire. It was heartbreaking to see, and the consequences that followed, even more so.
More than 80 people died, most of them young children and babies. For Samoa, it was the most devastating consequence resulting from lost trust and total belief in misinformation.
I’ve also seen what happens when people do trust safe messages: they reach the right people in time, and families are safer because of it. That’s what keeps me going.
Being right isn't the same as being heard
06 / HOW I WORK NOW
Ready before it matters
When things go wrong
I help leaders get ready for the moments that test public trust: an outbreak, extreme weather, an incident at their site, or an AI error that gets out.
When information is complex
I help organisations explain evidence, risk and uncertainty in ways the people they serve can understand and use, even with a small or no communications team.
The human side
I help with the human side: your standards, your people, your communication and your readiness.
07 / CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
There’s always room to grow
I’m a lifelong learner. I believe in continuous improvement. There’s always opportunity for every human being to improve, whether in our personal or professional lives. Whatever I learn, I want to use my skills to help others. It’s one of the most powerful examples my mother set for her children.
WORK WITH ME
Book a meeting
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands across Australia
and pay my respects to Elders past and present.
