Trinity’s new vice president for strategic marketing and communications
Photos by Wendy Carlson
Hellen Hom-Diamond joined the Trinity College community in January 2022 as vice president for strategic marketing and communications after serving as the chief communications officer at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., and before that, as chief communications officer at The Hotchkiss School. She has more than two decades of experience in education communications, most of which was spent at Yale University, where she served as director of campus communications in the Office of Public Affairs and Communications, and at the UCLA Alumni Association, where she served as director of online communications.
In her new role as a key member of Trinity’s senior administration, she leads strategies to connect people to the heart of the college and to present Trinity to the broader world.
Hom-Diamond earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Columbia University.
She recently took the time to respond to questions from The Trinity Reporter.
What drew you to Trinity College? I was excited to be a part of Trinity—it’s historic and dynamic and has graduated many leaders and artists of world significance. There is a stellar caliber of faculty and staff here who care deeply about the impact we have on students and on the well-being of where we live. Life is never dull here. There is never a shortage of projects, beliefs, perspectives, ideas, or opinions. Some opinions are pointed, some are subtle, and others are expressed with passion and creativity. I really like the feel of a small liberal arts college because it means you get to know people and much can be gained from the resulting discourse and energy. I don’t take the word “community” lightly in the digital age given how social media is shifting how well people think they know and care about one another. A small academic community allows for interactions that I hope we never lose, ones that build a depth of friendship, mentorship, and empathy. It makes for thousands of interesting stories that are unique to the inherent culture of Trinity. As a person who loves the work of storytelling, I find the opportunity to lead sizable communications and reputational efforts at Trinity to be a dream.
What closed the deal for me was meeting President Berger-Sweeney. I’ve worked with my fair share of leaders in education, and it is not hyperbolic to say that she is one of a kind. I truly appreciate her as a leader and role model.
What have been your priorities since you arrived in January? There is so much work to do! We have a highly talented communications team, and I feel grateful to work in the company of dedicated staff and academic colleagues. My first priority was to listen. It’s important to hear and understand the dynamics that have informed and shaped constituent relationships within the cultural context of this college. My next priority is to develop strategies to elevate Trinity’s national profile and fortify the reputation of a small but mighty college. A lot happens here, and we need the world to know it.
I would emphasize that it starts with our own community. Trinity has a powerful story to tell, but it needs community members to stop and reflect on the caliber of intellectual inquiry and innovation on this campus. Students have the power to illuminate perspectives and push boundaries in ways that can make others pause and think—and they become alumni who are then influenced by their time here. We are doing really interesting things at the college, right here and today. This is what our branding initiative has been about: reaffirming what we already know about Trinity and refining the lens through which we tell our story. I hope everyone, including the most vocal critics in our community, can see this as important.
Without question, there is a door opening right now, and that door is the college’s bicentennial. I am honored to co-chair the core campus committee for the bicentennial with Associate Dean for Curriculum Mitch Polin ’96, serving alongside the greater Steering and Celebration Committees. This will be a huge effort that requires significant coordination and energy from many people. I also appreciate that the comprehensive capital campaign is upon us and am grateful to the those who are working quite hard to get us to the community (a.k.a. “public”) phase. If we as a community reflect upon both what 200 years has meant and the potential in what the next 200 could bring, I think we have a tremendous opportunity to walk through this door with enormous grace, pride, and strength. Everyone has a part to play in this community, and I am excited to see how we will rally!
What opportunities do you see in marketing and communications at Trinity? A mentor at Yale once said to me that she saw the role of a communications office as the connective tissue of a complex organization, connecting priorities and messaging for our audiences. When you add in the marketing layer, we also are agents of our own future, creating effective reach to target audiences and persuasive content that delivers a compelling narrative. Every opportunity has the same goal: engage our community and elevate our reputation and reach.
We are developing strategies for a higher volume of media-rich stories, a more fulsome content strategy, focused messaging, and a deeper digital reach. Media relations and leadership messaging are central to our work. Yet, our small team cannot do it alone. So, a definite opportunity is to expand how we engage others to support our work. It is not enough for one department to create a great video or story with singular utility. In the era of social media, the question lies with how we engage students, faculty, staff, and alumni to take pride in these stories, to become agents and ambassadors to reach more people.
To you, our readers, I invite you to read our news frequently, pay attention to our social media, magazine, videos, and e-publications, and see what role you might play in our collective efforts to share the Trinity story.
What challenges do you foresee in this area, and how to you plan to tackle them? The biggest challenges we have are time and resources. We have only so many hours in the day and months in the year to execute at a level that competes with other institutions. I often meet peers from other universities who have more staff on their social media, web, or data analytics teams alone than we do in the entire Communications Office. And yet we operate and market in the same space, and we do it at a high level.
We are required to be crafty and resourceful, shifting from a department that responds to tasks at hand to one that makes longer-term strategic plans. It means using the branding guidelines that we have created with the firm Ologie as a baseline and lens for focusing our energy and stories. It means greater emphasis on our creative direction and becoming better and faster craftspeople who write, design, and photograph with vision and precision. It means pulling together a social media plan to operate as a collaborative ecosystem of departments and groups that push as many positive and interesting stories out as possible. And it also means coming up with measurements for how we can benchmark our progress and how we correct assumptions in our work.
What do you feel are Trinity’s greatest strengths? Without question, our people are the greatest strength. There is an entrepreneurial spirit here that when tapped into in the right way produces great work and sparks a different way of getting things done. Basically, we rely a lot on grit, willpower, skill, and dedication in order to compete at a high level. My colleagues and the students here are incredible.
How do you plan to share those strengths with the world? Storytelling. Doing it well requires strategy, skill, and artistry to connect with people on both intellectual and emotional levels. That is what we do in the Communications Office: we paint a mosaic of the many stories that define who we are as an institution and the student experience that is created.
Is there anything else you want readers to know about you? I like meeting new people, and I love what I do, so please say hello! In my spare time, I’m an artist and I love to draw, and, on occasion, I obsessively knit. Life is more satisfying when you put your heart into your work and express gratitude for the people and places around you.
For more on Trinity’s branding initiative, visit https://www.trincoll.edu/branding/