Tara Lapointe of SSHRC shares insights on how communicators can effectively translate complex research into accessible stories that resonate with diverse audiences.
How do you make academic research accessible to policymakers, the general public, and civil society? More importantly, how do you make it resonate?
In this episode of Ampersand, we dig into this and more with Tara Lapointe, Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement and Advancement at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Tara shares insights from her impressive career spanning arts, culture, and academic research, and provides valuable lessons for communicators navigating the challenges of translating complex research into accessible language.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email media@emdashagency.ca with any questions.
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Caitlin Kealey: Welcome to Ampersand the podcast helping good people be heard and comms people be better. I'm Caitlin Kealey the CEO of Emdash.
Megana Ramaswami: and I'm Megana Ramaswami, Senior Strategist at Emdash on this episode, I got to sit down with Tara LaPointe, who's the VP of Stakeholder Engagement and Advancement of Society at SSHRC.
Caitlin Kealey: Whew, what a job title.
For those that don't know, SSHRC is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I know SSHRC very well from my time in academic communications, and Tara and I have worked together on and off over the years. She's got a long, career in arts and foundation spaces.
And again, one of my buddies, so I need to know, Megana, what did you guys talk about?
Megana Ramaswami: Honestly, it does kind of feel like I'm hanging out with all your friends without you, which is a little weird, but I did love my conversation with Tara. She's super cool. And we got into the nuances of communicating research in today's media environment, which is a really good lesson for communications professionals, anybody who's translating complex information for different audiences.
Caitlin Kealey: Sounds good and nerdy, let's get into it.
Megana Ramaswami: Welcome to Ampersand, the show helping good people be heard and comms people be better. Our guest today is Tara Lapointe. If you'd like to introduce yourself and, uh, tell our listeners who you are.
Tara Lapointe: Of course, I'm Tara Lapointe.
I'm the Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement and Advancement of Society. I know it's a very big handle, uh, at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, otherwise known as SSHRC. Um, I'm a professional communicator. I've had a long career, uh, primarily in arts and culture, and I'm really excited to be here.
Megana Ramaswami: Fantastic. Well, we're excited to have you. Uh, so this is great for us as well. Um, we want to start with a little bit of an icebreaker question, uh, something that I think will be very relevant for all of us listening. Um, do you want to share a memory from your first computer or maybe your early days on the internet?
Tara Lapointe: Sure. You know, um, the immediate, so the first thought that pops into my brain is early in my career after university, um, I was working in Toronto at Harbourfront Centre for the International Festival of Authors. And we did have computers, but they were really just, I guess, glorified typewriters, right?
Like, they were used for word processing, but to share a file with somebody. I'm pretty sure I had to like save to a disk and bring it to them on the desk for them to review on their computers. But we did have a system and I think it was called the Wang W. A. N. G. If I'm not mistaken, and it was how we could send emails to one another inside of like all of the employees at Harbourfront. And there was only one of these machines. And it was located, like, almost in our entrance way, like in the admins office, and we had to stand and connect into the system. And it was just one of those little LED screens with like orange letters.
And that's how you access your email, but it was only internal email, not external email. So wow. How things changed in since those early days.
Megana Ramaswami: I love that. What a journey. Also, I have so many questions just about that. I feel like we could do a whole episode. I feel like Harbourfront may have replaced the water cooler moment with the W.A.N.G. moment.
I'm just imagining a line of people trying to access their internal messages, but that's incredible. I love that. So moving forward, I guess to today, how did you get started in this line of work?
Tara Lapointe: I think like a lot I fell into it. Um, in university, I had taken a communications class because I thought it would be easy.
And within a month, I was in love. I just thought this is who I am. This is what I want to do. I am so interested in how communication is created, received, all of the things that go wrong, how we can improve it, how we can be more transparent and authentic. So. Yeah, so I, I started in university. I ended up doing my degree in communications and then worked through a series of jobs doing, uh, communications and public relations for the Stratford Festival and Harbourfront and Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting.
Um, and then through, um, a move back to Ottawa, which is my hometown and roles at the National Arts Center and the Canada Council for the Arts and now SSHRC.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic. That is a very cool journey. And I think you described the feeling that a lot of communicators have when they first realize, “Oh, maybe this is something that I should be doing”.
So obviously previously you were in the arts industry, as you just explained, as well as the Michaëlle Jean Foundation. Uh, how do you feel like that prepared you for moving to shark?
Tara Lapointe: Yeah. So one of the things that I've been focused on in my career and in my career development is thinking about the transferability of skills.
So I started out really as a professional communicator working on the communication side of things. And then at Alliance Atlantis, I had a wonderful opportunity to do some education in marketing and so broaden my skill set in terms of ad placement and thinking about, you know, if you can't get that journalist to cover your story, you can buy the ad and write the headline.
I loved that control. Um, and then in different roles, I was able to expand my skill set in operations, in finance and budgeting, in, um, you know, kind of executive skills and strategic planning. And so those different shifts and, you know, when I was at Canada Council for the Arts, I started in marketing communications.
I had opportunity to move into another role where I was doing program leadership and development, um, overseeing the ERP bank, which was one of the highlights of my career. Um, and working on a number of other programs and all of those different things led me to applying for the job at the Michaëlle Jean Foundation and being the Executive Director there for three years, um, which was an incredible experience in my life.
And I just think that full package of skills, um, some that I'd worked on from the very first days as a communicator, others that I acquired a little later through experience, all of that I think has really set me up well for my current challenge at SSHRC, which, uh, I started just four months ago.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic.
I think this is a good opportunity since, you know, we started this episode with you telling us that you do have a very lengthy, but very interesting sounding title at SSHRC. Uh, do you want to tell us a little bit more about what your role is there?
Tara Lapointe: Absolutely. So let me start by saying that Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funds academic research in the social sciences and humanities in Canada.
So, um, you may know people in their master's programs or their PhD programs who are SSHRC funded because we fund lots of scholarships and fellowships, but we also fund, um, further education and research in Canada. So we're contributing to Canada's knowledge base about ethics and legal systems and consumer behaviors and so much more.
My role at SSHRC, um, I oversee a couple of different areas, including an incredibly dynamic communications team who do everything from translation to websites to writing speeches to social media, um, strategy, of course, and so much more.
I have an incredibly smart team that is focused on Indigenous strategy and how we support and encourage more Indigenous participation and Indigenous-led research in Canada. And I have another team that's working on something called Future Challenges. And so this is foresight work, thinking about what are the grand challenges, or sometimes the term is wicked challenges, that Canada is facing, and how can we synthesize the knowledge that's already been researched and developed to put that together and then identify what do we need to know next to advance solutions to these grand challenges.
So that's some of the work that my team does.
Megana Ramaswami: That sounds like such a fascinating combination, and I think it's the types of questions that many communicators are super excited to dig their, you know, dig their nails into, and I imagine that might go some way into explaining part of the next question.
You talked about having an excellent team and the very interesting issues that you get to work within. Is there anything else that gets you excited about doing communications on behalf of SSHRC?
Tara Lapointe: So much gets me excited about doing communications. That's sure. You know, when we do things like, I'll give you two examples of programs that I'm working on that just give me joy.
Um, so one of them is our Storyteller Challenge. So, Storyteller Challenge. It's for university students at any level — undergrad, masters, doctoral — to talk about the impact of social science and humanities research. It can be their own research, so they could be a PhD student and it's their thesis that they're talking about.
Or it could be research that's inspired them. It can be, you know, something that has captured their imagination and is influencing the direction of their career or their academic career. And so I got to be part of the Storyteller Challenge, which we held in Saskatoon this past spring. And the range of stories is incredible.
You know, things like the role of AI Influencers, which, you know, oh, I know it's a bit mind boggling, but we all know it. You've seen it that there are real people who are influencers, but now there are AI created personas that are controlled by somebody else. And so what does all of that mean? So that's, you know, one story that was told.
Another, an architecture student is working with traditional boat builders in maritime communities to preserve knowledge around how these different boats are built. It's kind of a dying art. There are fewer and fewer people who are building boats by hand. And so now we're preserving the stories, we're preserving the knowledge, but they're also building kits so that people can build their own in the future, um, without necessarily having that, you know, generational knowledge being passed down. And so not only are the projects super exciting, but the storyteller challenge is a communications challenge.
It's how do you tell the story of the research they're conducting and why it's important in three minutes or less. And so we do coaching and we're encouraging academics, not only to build up their research skills. But build up and beef up their communication skills. So you can see why I'm excited about it.
Megana Ramaswami: That is phenomenal. I mean, not only are you getting a front row seat to trends that honestly, some of which seem to be disrupting the communications industry and media itself. But I think that, you know, it goes a long way towards our next really important piece of this question that I really want to dig into that last part that you talked about about communicating research.
You know, what are the challenges that you and the researchers have based in this mission? And you know, do you have any, uh, you know, solutions or tips that you can let our listeners know about? You know, how do you challenge or how do you communicate, you know, complex concepts?
Tara Lapointe: Yeah, that is the challenge right there.
Communicating complex ideas succinctly and in plain language. A lot of academic jargon is jargon. Um, there is a style that we teach in universities in how to write in an academic context. And that's important within that context, but can be really opaque for the general public, for policy makers, for civil society who are advocating for change.
And so that's one of the things that really excites me about my job. Is being able to work with the really big brains who are producing the research. And helping them translate that into accessible language and accessible formats. I was just looking this morning actually at an article about Academia Tok.
So we've got TikTok. We've got Book Tok. Well, now there's Academia Tok. And so it's this, this idea of how do you take complex issues and present them in visual short formats to get the message across. So it's just one example of, of how the world is changing, but definitely a challenge in our field.
Megana Ramaswami: I love Academia Tok. I am all over it. It's just really fascinating to see folks who are, you know, real experts in their field, be able to communicate in these fun visual ways. And most of the research is just fascinating. So, uh, that is very cool that you guys are engaging in that. You know, I think what you talked about in terms of that accessibility, it lends itself a lot to, you know, um, empathy and clarity.
And what is your, you know, sort of advice to communicators in bringing those pieces, uh, when we're talking about, you know, communicating these complex concepts?
Tara Lapointe: Mm hmm. I think when, you know, people listen to people. And so to communicate an idea, you can't disassociate the idea from the person or people who are delivering it.
And so we want to encourage warmth, authenticity, sincerity, humanness in that communication. And I, and I think too, when we think of the need, necessity, desire to have more diverse voices participate in research and participate in communicating research, we really have to think through that authenticity lens. You know, we want to hear Indigenous people speak about their own research on their own communities.
Not to say that colonial researchers don't have something important to say. They do. They're contributing to our body of knowledge. But there's a very different lens when it comes to a researcher is speaking about their own community. So I think that, you know, that idea of authenticity and is a really critical one as communicators.
Megana Ramaswami: I really love that idea of making sure you're working with those diverse voices, ensuring that that authenticity comes through. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that's good advice for, you know, many of our listeners who are communicators, who are looking to bring that through about working with different communities.
Uh, if you had one piece of advice for anyone who wanted to excel in your field and, and maybe take on some of these challenges in communicating research or communicating maybe, you know, climate science or other areas that we've seen major challenges in ensuring the general public has the right information.
What would that piece of advice be?
Tara Lapointe: Take it on. Take it on. You know, these are such important challenges. And when communicators are passionate, not just about communication, but also about their subject matter, that's when the magic happens. That's when we see innovative ideas. That's when we see the passion come through, um, and the persistence, because these big challenges are going to take multidisciplinary approaches.
They're going to take a long time to solve. So we need people that want to make that commitment to that subject and push it forward.
Megana Ramaswami: That was fantastic. I love that. Very inspiring. I feel inspired. That's awesome. So, you know, okay, let's, let's maybe start here, you know, looking ahead at the next 10 years.
And given that you have this front row seat to really what's coming up and the cutting edge concepts and ideas that we're going to be grappling with, not to mention the technologies that are already starting to integrate into our lives and our work. What do communicators need to be prepared for?
Tara Lapointe: What a great question.
The world as we know is changing. You know, you don't have to go very far to listen to a news broadcast to talk about disruptive technologies, including the use of AI and whether that is um, you know, simple things like ChatGPT in the classroom, um, or how it's disrupting everything, um, deep fakes, political interference, right?
So these are some of the subjects that social science and humanities researchers are very focused on at this time. When we are identified those grand challenges, AI is, it's a theme in and of itself, but it's kind of a cross-cutting theme across all kinds of things around climate change, around, um, political influence around governance systems.
You know, you can just imagine the deep, um, and varied influences that we're seeing. So as communicators, I think there's so many different things that we need to be thinking about. One is around the credibility of sources and making sure that who we represent is, in fact, credible and authentic voice. That we have the critical thinking skills that you often get through pursuing an education in social science and humanities to know the difference and to discern the difference.
And, you know, to be always on that foresight piece of what's next, there's, I don't mean to be doom and gloom. There's a lot about AI that is going to make our lives easier. There's a lot about AI that is going to make processes more efficient, that's going to make work less boring and repetitive. And so we want to capitalize on all of those opportunities.
But we also need to be ready, really aware of, kind of, the nefarious uses that are, we're already starting to see develop. But as communicators, I think it's really our role to be preserving authenticity and credibility where we can.
Megana Ramaswami: I like that you talk about the role that communicators have in that and that we in many cases, being both the experts and in some cases, the stewards of how we experience, say, the digital world and you know how we can shape these concepts, I'm wondering if you have any maybe advice on communicating that media literacy to a general public that's experiencing, you know, this phenomena.
I mean, we're all experiencing this phenomena at the same time and figuring out our relationship to it. But I like what you just explained about that media literacy piece. Just wondering if you have any other thoughts on it or what communicators should be doing to help shape that.
Tara Lapointe: Yeah. Um, you know, again, in my experience in my career, the communications shop in any organization — non profit, for profit — is often the trailblazer, early adopters, pioneers of new technology, and it often falls on our shoulders as professional communicators to inform the rest of our organizations.
And I take that role really seriously. I think that we should be adopting the new things, test piloting them, and then most importantly, sharing that knowledge and best practices inside of our organizations and with one another, right? So this is when, you know, from the Participating in professional associations like IABC or CPRS and sharing that information, but within your organization to, you know, being that advocate and sharing your knowledge also means that you are helping out the finance team and you're helping at the HR team.
Well, you can see the benefits of that. HR will then use some of these technologies to, um, hire, which is going to benefit the organization. So, and not to mention, they're all people who have lives and potential families, and so the ripple effect of these, um, you know, informing and paying it forward, um, we don't know how far our influence can go.
Megana Ramaswami: That's fantastic. And I think that's a very good point to end on: our potential influence is limitless. And I really love that concept. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Tara. This is a really fun conversation. Really fascinating touch points and information. I love it.
Tara Lapointe: Well, this is the benefit of having a long career.
Caitlin Kealey: Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us.
For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favorite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode. Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey, and it's produced by Elio Peterson. This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact helping progressives be heard.