Interview Script

at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane majoring in communication studies. After 2 years of

working in the advertisement agency Publicis Groupe as a communication executive, she applied

for the Fulbright Scholarship, which is a US department and Moroccan government funded

scholarship, that funded her full Master degree at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

During her Master years, Naziha had the graduate consultancy job that allowed her to get

hired by clients and paid while she was still studying. After that, she came back to Morocco and

worked as a product category manager for La Belle Vie Carrefour which is the second biggest

Moroccan supermarket chain and international firms specialized in logistics and retail. Then, she

joined Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane in 2014 as a lecturer in strategic communication and a

faculty member. Currently, she is applying for Ph.D. programs in order to continue her career

path in academia.

The main reason why I chose Pr. Houki to be the center of my interview is thanks to her

passion about her career and what she is doing as a daily job. Usually, I see that devotion and

dedication are important elements that should be included in oneself’s mindset in order to

succeed, and that’s the exact thing that I noticed in Pr. Houki’s works and classes. She

challenges herself every day to be a better person and be more productive in the future for her

community. Personally, she became my idol and my inspiration as a great woman and as hard

worker.

Interview Script

Houda Touchen: First of all, let’s start by having a brief explanation about your job? I mean

what are the duties/responsibilities/functions of your job?

Naziha Houki: I’m a faculty member and a lecturer in strategic communication. Basically, my

job is to create and design the courses in order that I teach in order to reach the intended learning

outcomes. Overall, I teach four courses each regular semester and one course in the summer. I

am responsible for the strategic communication concentration classes and public speaking

classes. Along with my teaching duties, I have service duties which mean that I need to do an

activity for the community and the university in general.

H Q.: Given the fact that I am interested in the concentration of strategic communication, what

is the nature of the courses in this specific concentration?

N A.: The basis of the courses allows you to practice communication in communication

departments or communication agencies where you need to develop communication action plans

such as who should receive the message, what message, and which channel should go through

with specific objectives. First, the courses taught in that concentration pertain to marketing

communication. Marketing communication teaches you the integrated marketing communication

process from understanding your environment to getting the intended results. Also, the second

one is public relations concentration that is about building and maintaining mutually beneficial

relations between organizations and their publics. And the last one is organizational

communication which is about how organizations communicate within and understanding how to

navigate an organization. Actually, organizational communications is more theoretical but with a

great analysis in understanding the real world’s companies; whereas the public relations and

marketing communication are more practical and are about building your tool box for what you

need to use as a communication practitioner. And they are not only for the goal to get the job;

they are also useful for an academic career.

H Q.: What part of this job do you personally find most satisfying and the part that is most

challenging?

N A.: The most exciting part of my job as a faculty is seeing the lightbulb. The lightbulb happens

in students, which is very hard with the online teaching by the way. What I love is being in the

classroom and seeing someone seems confused, then, they have a lightbulb moment makes them

more eager to learn. Personally, I really love it when that switch happens and I find it really

interesting. You see that you add value not just through the content itself but that you were really

able to lift that switch which makes it the most satisfying part of my job. However, the most

challenging part is when the students take the class only because they are required to take the

class and it is really hard to switch it on for them just a little bit.

H Q.: what other jobs can you get with the same background?

N A.: So many. I mean especially with the pandemic, a lot of people are saying that there no jobs

and it is an insecure job market which is a total myth. With my background, you can become a

pure marketer, you can work in consultancy jobs, or you can open your own communication

agency. People with my background are brand managers, CEOs of their own communication

companies who manage PR companies, create festivals and events, film production companies.

However, we can’t include journalism because I don’t have a solid background in writing, but if

you have a good writing portfolio or get hired in a journalism company, magazines, or

newspapers in your master years, it can be definitely possible.

H Q.: If your job progresses as you like, what would be the next step in your career?

N A.: Honestly, in terms of teaching, I feel like I explored it all right now. Especially with the

online teaching, I feel like I challenged myself in understanding all aspects. However, the thing

that I have never tried before is teaching big amphitheater classes because in AUI, normally,

communication classes are mostly 15- 20 people maximum. However, my next plan is research

through Ph.D. degree about digital activism and feminism movements which will really make me

able to move a step above lecturing.

H Q.: What are the major qualifications and skills, which are also important, for success in this

occupation?

N A.: I have my own philosophical answer about that. To answer this question, you need firstly

to answer the question of what is the definition of success. Success is whatever you think success

means. For me, success is reaching my purpose in life, and to get it, you have to know what is

your purpose in life. And I would like to mention what an AUI alumni, who works in the

Economic World Forum, said about this. He said that AUI gives you tools. You can give the

same tool box to anyone, but it depends on what you do with it that makes a change. So for me,

what do you need in order to succeed is a tool box. And having a degree is not the essential

thing. Everyone can have a degree. It’s actually how your brain is shaped with that degree such

as your problem-solving skills, empathy and resilience values, connecting the dots, and going

beyond the material. Those are the essential things which are required today to succeed. On

another note, currently, we are experiencing a pandemic with the covid-19 virus, and a lot of

organizations and businesses and young people have crumbled. Therefore, it pushed to change

the gears. The question is are you able to adapt to this challenging fast-pace world? The key is

good to be book smart, but better to be street smart.

H Q.: What courses have proved to be the most valuable to you in your work?

N A.: There was a one course that it was one of my first communication classes which was

called human communication and now it is communication and development. It was really

interesting because we dived into identity and we did this paper about media deprivation.

Actually, the professor wanted us to use no media for a full weekend. Personally, I could not do

it at all and it was really hard to do it because we were only able to work with the people who

around us at that moment. Honestly, it was a great experience because it made me more self-

aware of what I do and the impact of technology and the field I was getting at. Moreover, it

contributed to my understanding of what I am doing what I am doing and why I think that

communication is a fascinating field.

H Q.: What are the best/worst things about working in a multicultural global workplace?

N A.: That’s a great question. That’s a good question because we don’t realize the impact of a

global workplace until we are in one. In AUI, it is actually the culture of it that is still present to

the extent that we get easily at ease with each other. When you get outside of it and you dive

deeper in a multicultural environment, you start realizing your biases, similar to my case when I

was in the USA. In other words, you realize what you take for granted and all the assumptions

you make on a daily basis. And if you go somewhere else different from your environment, the

fact that you will want to start a conversation requires you to initiate it with a lot of background

explaining every single detail. And when you listen, you ask way more questions while starting

to analyze things that you stopped analyzing when you were in your own culture and your own

bubble. As a result, it gives you an appreciation of diving into someone’s frame of reference. It

increases your knowledge at a pace that you can’t even imagine. From my experience, I learned

more in a diverse environment than I learned in a similar environment because I was challenging

my ideologies and my own way of thinking, which allowed to acquire knowledge that I wouldn’t

have if I was in my comfort zone. From the other side, it teaches you about respect, inclusion and

ideas integration that comes from different perspectives, which is about unifying individuals and

not separating them. And that’s the beauty in the global workplace. The worst part is not

appreciating the differences. For example, from my own experience in the USA, they will always

edit my writing thinking that it’s grammatically wrong given the fact their English was on the

speaking part. So they kept correcting me as I am grammatically wrong when it’s actually them

who are wrong. But due to the fact that I am a second-language English speaker, I can’t have an

opinion about that realizing that I have a less of a voice concerning that.

H Q.: What is, from your perspective, the most commonly held misconception about people of

your culture?

N A.: There was that thing of that I am white because my country Morocco is located in Africa,

and that I was not wearing hijab. We can also add the fact that I spoke English and wrote it better

than them, but there was always a debate about that obviously. The thing that I knew a lot about

the American system knowing that I am Moroccan also was a mystery for them.

H Q.: Have you ever felt excluded based on your gender?

N A.: Frankly, it was not my experience in a sense that I was lucky. I am formal with the people

that I don’t know and I give them respect playing the games and the codes, but I break that

barrier very easily. However, I am friendly with my colleagues and the people who I know.

H Q.: What offends you the most?