Policy Reports

Update Nov 6th: The session has been rescheduled to the new year.

Vina Nadjibulla and Kshitij (KJ) Sharan will lead an 80-minute hybrid workshop on policy reports and their use in policy communications and advocacy. Policy reports are used as a resource by stakeholders including policy makers, bureaucrats, non-profit professionals, policy advocates, and academics. We will discuss how to create and disseminate effective, inclusive and powerful policy reports. The workshop is open to students, faculty, and staff at UBC.

Topics will include:

• Writing for international organizations
• Policy reports vs academic articles
• Structure, formatting, and design
• Writing tips for policy impact

Workshops in this series, click here for more information on this series. Participants will benefit from attending multiple workshops in the series, but they can choose to attend only those that best fit their interests and availability.

• Sept 25: Intro to Policy Communication (Click for handout and additional resources, under the "resources" section)
• Oct 30: Op-eds for Policy
• Nov 17: Policy Briefs 1

Facilitators

Vina Nadjibulla is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a Senior Research Fellow at the Soufan Center and a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. As an international security specialist, Vina has over two decades of professional experience in diplomacy, advocacy, policy making, and political risk analysis working with the United Nations and various non-profit organizations. Vina’s current research at UBC is focused on arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations, Canada-China bilateral relations and exploring Canadian policy options in the Indo-Pacific region in the context of growing US-China geopolitical competition. Vina holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and is fluent in English, Russian and Farsi and speaks intermediate Mandarin Chinese. Born in the Soviet Union, raised in Afghanistan, and educated in the United States, Vina has also worked and lived in Kenya, Tajikistan and China.

Kshitij Sharan is the Head of Strategy and Operations at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) at UBC. He has a Masters in Public Policy and Global Affairs from UBC and a BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University. His work has ranged across sectors of education, water and sanitation, menstrual hygiene, gender equity, child protection and social entrepreneurship. He has been a founding member of medium to large scale non-profits and social enterprises in India, which has allowed him to engage deeply with decision-makers including ministers, parliamentarians, CEOs and communities. He was a founding member of one of India’s largest digital advocacy organizations, Global Citizen India, which  uses the collective voice of the youth to hold decision-makers accountable and accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. Kshitij has also managed a political campaign during the 2019 Indian National Election and led strategy for an anti-trafficking organization in India. He is a Khemka Fellow, a StartingBloc School of Social Innovation Fellow and a Fellow at the Global Social Change Leadership Institute at the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University. For more, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshitij-sharan-229ab9104/.