“The big thing to know about this program is that it’s the most robust and largest teaching program on communications inside a public policy school.”
Lauren Brodsky, lecturer in public policy, states this fact with pride.
Brodsky, who has been teaching in the Harvard Kennedy School Communications Program for ten years and has served as the senior director for the last three years, meets routinely with other public policy schools. “I am frequently advising other directors of communications programs,” said Brodsky who previously taught at Northeastern University, has published for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company, and consults on communications for international organizations.
What began as a single course in 2000—“The Arts of Communication”—has evolved into a program that now offers 34 for-credit courses and over 30 workshops and study groups each year, supported by Program Manager Alison Kommer. “Our goal is to make future leaders better communicators,” said Brodsky, “What makes us unique is how many classes we have to reach that goal.”
The courses address writing for speeches, columns, op-eds, and policy memos. There are courses on public speaking, engaging with the media, and crisis communications. There is even a course on storytelling using data visualization. “It’s a real hands-on approach, with quick feedback,” said Brodsky.
Another unique aspect of the program is the faculty. Each lecturer brings deep, real-world experience to the classroom, stepping away from their duties as opinion writers, presidential speechwriters, policymakers, engineers, storytellers, and crisis communication consultants. Each arms policy students with knowledge and proven communication skills they can use to have an impact on public policy issues.
“One of our writing consultants, Austin Bogues, is the news desk editor for USA Today, someone our students might be submitting opinion pieces to one day,” Brodsky said. The Communications Program website lists all student published work, including 10 op-eds published so far in 2026.
Brodsky noted that while the opinion writing course is very popular, speechwriting, public speaking and policy writing are core tools for HKS graduates. These courses evolved from the original vision of “The Arts of Communications.”
“People assume soft skills are easy, and they are just not,” said Jeffrey Seglin, who formerly directed the program, which he has been with since 2011, and is now a senior lecturer emeritus. He continues to teach two for-credit column writing workshop courses in January term each year. “I was a tenured professor at Emerson when I came to HKS to direct this program,” he said. At Emerson College, he was director of the graduate program for writing and publishing and successfully increased its scope.
When the opportunity to develop the Communications Program at HKS was offered, Seglin was interested. He knew he could teach the writing and speaking skills—the soft skills—public policy students at HKS need to effectively convey their policies. “I like teaching much more than I like administrative duties [he is a two-time recipient of the Manuel C. Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching, an award given by students] but apparently I’m good at the administrative stuff,” he said.
A former magazine editor, he wrote an ethics column in the Sunday New York Times for six years, a column he continues to write in syndication. What he found at HKS was a willingness to explore more course options in communications and the support of faculty, Academic Dean Suzanne Cooper, and the dean at the time, David Ellwood.
That first course in 2000 was co-taught by late Professor of Public Service David Gergen and now retired lecturer and program director, Marie Danziger. Called “The Arts of Communication,” it focused on the performance of speeches rather than the writing of speeches, according to Brodsky.
“Jeffrey massively grew the program during his time,” she said. “He focused on the areas in the professional world where students will need to communicate, and developed courses to set them up with the appropriate skills.”
Professionals sharing their arts of communication
Alex Green MPA 2014, adjunct lecturer in public policy, was a student in the program and now teaches “Writing for Policy and Politics.” He credits both Seglin and Brodsky for steering him toward communication fundamentals.
“We share the belief that it’s not the flashiest thing students want,” said Green, a disability historian who has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, among other publications. “It’s learning how to communicate in a fast-paced environment with all the secretaries of state.” He finds his students are as eager as he was to get back to the basics of communication. “This course could easily be retitled ‘the art of asking questions.’”
“We share the belief that it’s not the flashiest thing students want. It’s learning how to communicate in a fast-paced environment with all the secretaries of state.”
Other professionals from journalism, like Margaret Talev, also appreciated that teaching style. Talev, who was an Institute of Politics fellow in 2018, is now the Kramer Director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship. Even though she is a veteran journalist, with a 30-year career covering politics and the White House, she was energized by the work at HKS and looked for ways to be involved after her fellowship.
The timing was right since the Communications Program wanted to expand its offerings, so Talev was hired to teach a course called “Engaging the Media.” Talev said her behind-the-scenes knowledge led her to believe many policymakers were afraid of engaging with reporters. The point of her course is to demystify working with the press.
Her course, launched in 2020, was popular in unexpected ways. Emergency room doctors, immunologists, and other public health officials were trying to figure out public messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She also acknowledged that in a politically polarized environment, there are many different media ecosystems, each requiring a different approach. She has HKS students from business, students running for Congress, legislative staffers, and veterans returning from service, all eager to learn the best tactics. The key, she said, is understanding the different purposes of a reporter, a podcaster, a columnist, or a talk show host and aligning your message with their medium.
When teaching, Talev said, she also keeps learning and finds that the best part.
In addition to courses, each year the Communications Program runs over 30 workshops and study groups that offer individualized writing and speaking support.
Ryan Prior MC/MPA 2025, for example, recently led a workshop on how to get a book published. Prior was originally accepted into the HKS mid-career program in March 2020 when he was a health reporter for CNN and the COVID-19 crisis was just breaking. “I met with my editor, and she said ‘Harvard is later. The pandemic is now.’ So I deferred my acceptance,” Prior said. His coverage over the next year and half turned into his book, “The Long Haul: How Long COVID Survivors are Revolutionizing Healthcare.”
When he finally arrived at HKS, Seglin was his advisor and encouraged Prior to present a workshop idea on book publishing to the Communications Program. “He was interested in teaching,” recalled Seglin. “He was used to being interviewed about his book, but not really used to teaching, so this was a way for him to get some experience doing that.”
Prior’s two-day workshop focused on the journey toward being an author, and how to leverage your book toward future career aspirations such as scaling a startup or running for office. “Becoming an author transformed my life, and I hope others can walk the same path,” Prior said.
The workshop drew 38 people from across Harvard. “It was a pleasure to get to toss around ideas for plot or structure with former members of the U.K. Parliament, U.S. Foreign Service, and Massachusetts House of Representatives,” he said.
The Communications Program has a tradition of launching writers of all kinds. Brodsky published a book in 2023, “Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself,” and Green finished his book “A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America's Disabled,” a 2026 winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, while teaching in the program.
Another HKS graduate, Gaia van der Esch MPA 2020, said she was surprised that her communications course inspired her to write about her experiences in an interview for HKS Magazine. With encouragement from Brodsky, van der Esch wrote about Italian society and politics—work that would eventually become her first book, published in her home country, “Volti d’Italia.”
Next-level communications
The Communications Program is constantly refined, and new courses help students navigate new avenues of messaging.
Hong Qu, for example, is teaching a new course this year called "Data Visualization: Storytelling Strategies.” By the end of his course, students will learn to use data visualizations—charts, maps or infographics that enhance a briefing or policy memo—as another tool in creating clear and persuasive messages.
Qu, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, serves as a research fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. He was one of the first engineers on YouTube’s startup team, building key features such as video sharing, channels, and skippable ads.
“What I learned from journalism and YouTube is that storytelling matters a lot,” said Qu.
Humanizing data, Qu said, can evoke empathy in the audience, which is a key aspect of good storytelling.
For policy students, this means creating messages that convey a shared reality. “The spirit of transparency is really critical. Data provides transparency and accountability in a consensus-building way,” said Qu.
“When you create evidence-based policymaking, your goal is to serve the populations portrayed in the data,” said Qu. “A key skill whether you are a leader in government or nonprofits is to be good at advocacy using the data, the visuals. We all live in a very visual culture; you can’t avoid it.”
Perhaps the continually changing communications landscape is why Seglin finds it so hard to retire fully. There is always some new wisdom to impart.
“Teaching has been a second career for me that I happen to have been doing now as long as I did the first career as a business writer and editor,” said Seglin. “My graduate work is in theology from Harvard Divinity School,” he said. “I wasn’t a journalism major or a business major. But I knew putting these courses together, offering them for credit, would help students take persuasive communications skills seriously when crafting policy.” Seglin, like the other lecturers in the program, constantly hears from former students about the difference the courses have made in their careers.
“It’s truly a unique program,” Brodsky says. “We are a robust cornerstone right here at HKS that doesn’t exist in other places.”
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Photographs by Susan Hughes and Lydia Rosenberg; portraits by Martha Stewart and Shawn Read