Head of Communications & Public Affairs in Edinburgh

The Head of Communications & Public Affairs is a pivotal role at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) promoting our world-leading work in science, conservation, horticulture, and education. Working as an active member of the Senior Leadership Team, this role will lead the organisation’s approach to strategic communications, seeking opportunities to engage external audiences, disseminate key messages, and raise RBGE’s profile on a national and international stage through press and media engagement. With oversight of the communications and publishing teams, this role will also provide key support to the Regius Keeper and the Executive Team in shaping engagement and communication strategies with political stakeholders across the Scottish and UK governments. This is an exciting opportunity to make a real impact in the next phase of RBGE’s corporate strategy, strengthening key policy relationships and promoting RBGE’s expertise to deliver real impact in the fight against the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Key Responsibilities

• Communications & Public Affairs:
• Strategy: Lead on the development and delivery of new strategies bringing public affairs and communications activities together to create influence and impact across RBGE’s diverse stakeholder audiences, securing high-quality, positive press coverage in UK-wide and international outlets and building influence and advocacy in Scottish and UK government spheres.
• Relationships: Build and maintain strong external relationships and recruit influential advocates and ambassadors for RBGE, engaging with key individuals and groups including senior press contacts, peer institutions, policy makers and political stakeholders to widen audience reach for key messaging and partnership work.
• Impact: Define and monitor key metrics to assess the success and impact of communications and public affairs initiatives, setting targets for growth in reach and engagement and aligning activity and resource to respond to key priorities.
• Policy: Lead on intelligence gathering and analysis of relevant policy developments and media debates to identify opportunities to promote RBGE’s research, education, conservation and horticultural activities.
• Crisis Communications: Oversee crisis communication and reputation management strategies, providing expert advice to senior colleagues underpinned by the development of robust processes to enable swift and effective responses in crisis scenarios.
• Internal Communications: Support the ongoing work to strengthen RBGE’s internal communications activity, developing channels and processes to maximise impact with available resource.
• Collaboration: Work closely with the Head of Philanthropy and Head of Individual Giving in the Marketing & Communications division to ensure messaging is appropriately aligned across press, marketing, supporter engagement and major donor comms activities.
• Publishing:
• Strategy: Work with the Director of Development & Communications and the wider Executive Team to refresh and reinvigorate the strategic approach to publications, setting a clear vision and direction to guide the future approach to new publications and to appropriately prioritise team resource.
• Publication pipeline: Evaluate existing processes for the creation of new books ensuring projects are strategically aligned, appropriately resourced, and will deliver return on investment by targeting identified audiences; support the publications team in managing existing projects and liaising between authors, publishers and printers to deliver publications on schedule and within pre-agreed contract terms.
• Partnerships and suppliers: Lead on contract negotiations and coordination with suppliers such as distributors and external publishers; engage with colleagues in the Botanics Trading Company to explore commercial opportunities for licensing and collaborative projects.
• Team resource and integration: Ensure the publications team is well-integrated with the wider communications and marketing function, and that the resourcing of wider academic or corporate publications is appropriately supported and prioritised alongside external projects.
• Leadership & Governance:
• Team Management: Lead the Communications and Publishing functions with direct line management for the Press Manager and Publications Team, ensuring a collegiate, collaborative environment is promoted where colleagues are supported and empowered.
• Senior Leadership: Act as an engaged, active member of RBGE’s Senior Leadership Team, providing advice, guidance and support across all functions of the Communications and Public Affairs division and championing the work of these teams across the organisation.
• Executive Team Support: Deputise for the Director of Development & Communications where appropriate and provide direct support to the Executive Team as required, acting as the senior voice in the organisation in the development and delivery of strategic comms and public affairs activity.
• Representation: Represent RBGE at external meetings, conferences, and events when required, in addition to engagement and delivery through internal meetings, committees, and working groups as senior leader and subject expert in the organisation.
• Finance, Governance & Reporting: Establish procedures to ensure data, supplier contracts, and internal processes such as out-of-hours support rotas are managed and documented appropriately; take responsibility for an annual departmental budget, supporting direct reports in the creation of forecasting, operational plans, and project budgets; provide regular input into central reporting streams to capture deliverables and manage risk register updates.
• Additional duties: Undertake other tasks relevant to the wider remit of this role as agreed with the Director of Development & Communications.