New University Director, Marketing & Communications
The University of the West Indies is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Rhonda Jaipaul-O’Garro as University Director, Marketing and Communications. In this role, Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro is responsible for the coordination of integrated marketing and communications across the entire University system. Her primary focus is the strategic imperative of promoting a cohesive single UWI brand consciousness as outlined in the Triple A Strategy. This entails working closely with the University’s executive leadership, campus Marketing and Communications teams and other key university offices to elevate and positively position The UWI as a distinctive regional and global brand of higher education excellence.
The University Marketing and Communications Office, which Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro now leads, is an “in-house agency” which provides strategic communications, media relations, marketing, publications, digital media and event management support to the University’s Regional Headquarters and its affiliated offices.
A marketing and communications professional with over 19 years’ experience in higher education, Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro has an established record of high quality work and has made significant contributions to the University. During her tenure spanning almost two decades, Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro has served on numerous UWI committees and taskforces, and contributed to countless initiatives and projects. She was joint lead-author of The UWI Brand Identity Guidelines, worked on the implementation of the first One-UWI student portal (my.uwi.edu) and One-UWI system of campus websites, and served as the production editor of the multiple award-winning Pelican Magazine.
More recently, Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro has provided leadership in the development and execution of strategic messaging to enhance UWI’s brand visibility and global media profile in focal areas such as climate research and resilience advocacy. She has spearheaded the production of various high-level stakeholder reports including the Vice-Chancellor’s Report to Council, and the UWI Goes Global Special Report. Dr. Jaipaul-O’Garro has offered strategic marketing and communications counsel in her role on a diverse range of working groups for landmark projects. Among them, the Implementation Committee for the Five Islands Campus, the UWItv Executive Production team, the UWI-China Institute for Information Technology Committee, the University Quality Management Team, the Faculty of Sport Launch Committee and the UWI 70th Anniversary Planning Committee, to name just a few.
Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro’s public service includes her work as a member of the Board of Governors of Trinidad and Tobago’s National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST) since 2017. Internationally, she has served on the editorial committee for the Academic Summit organised by global communications firm, Edelman, as well as on the media/communications sub-committee for the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiatives University programme held at Arizona State University in 2014. She holds memberships on a range of professional marketing and communications bodies.
Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro is both a Chevening (2003-2004) and Fulbright (2013-2014) scholar. A proud Pelican, she received her PhD in Business Administration from The UWI in 2017. She also holds an MA (Distinction) in Public Communication and Public Relations from the UK’s University of Westminster (2004) and a BSc in Management Studies (First Class Honours) from The UWI (2000).
Dr Jaipaul-O’Garro began her career at The UWI as a Research Assistant at the St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago and moved quickly through the ranks to Marketing and Communications Assistant, then Publications Coordinator. In 2006, she transitioned from her St. Augustine attachment to the Vice-Chancellery-based position as University Marketing and Communications Officer, then Manager. Her new appointment as University Director took effect from August 1, 2019.
