About The Comms Desk
Learn to communicate so your ideas are heard and understood. A weekly newsletter about communicating with clarity, credibility and connection in the age of AI. We also discover history’s hidden lessons for the modern workplace.
I’m Vienna Senima Richards, the creator of The Comms Desk. Here, I explore communication in all its complexity. I look at interpretation and how clarity, credibility, and human connection survive in an age of algorithms and information overload.
I live and write from Australia’s Northern Territory. My career as a writer began in 1996 with a commissioned chapter for a maternal health book published by HarperCollins New Zealand. It drew on my training presentations for nurses at Auckland City Hospital.
That early writing experience shaped everything that followed, including completing a journalism degree. It lit a fire within. It taught me the power of the written word. They can build knowledge and even save lives. The reverse is true as well.
I also worked as a freelance newspaper columnist for the country’s largest paper. After graduating with my communication degree, I moved into broadcast television news and current affairs. As an early morning TV breakfast show producer, news producer, and foreign news producer, I learned the craft of writing for the ear. I then left the TV newsroom for broadcast radio journalism, working as a research manager, acting news editor, and news producer.
Since then, I returned to the health and medical sector in roles such as communications manager, consultant, project manager, media manager, trainer, and writer. I’ve also worked in education, performing arts, civil engineering and public works, international development, emergency response, aged care, workforce development, and training. Plus, I’ve worked in local, national and regional governments in both New Zealand and Australia. I’m very familiar with parliamentary and legislative processes.
Across more than 20 years in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, I’ve seen communication under pressure: in hospitals, in education, in government briefings, in parliamentary debates in the House, in emergency response, in corporate boardrooms and in communities. Those experiences taught me that communication isn’t just about what we say. There’s so much more to it. It is about how people understand, trust, and respond.
Through the lenses of history, human behaviour, and technology, I look at patterns that reveal why communication succeeds or fails. From doctors who resisted handwashing to the rise of AI and online misinformation.
What Makes This Different
The Comms Desk share ideas that help people think more deeply about how communication works in business, community and family life, and what happens when it doesn’t work. The aim is to check your assumptions at the door, learn new perspectives, and stay a learner.
This newsletter uncovers lessons that help people navigate today’s communication challenges and digital noise with more clarity and confidence.
Topics include:
communicating with credibility in the age of AI
media training and storytelling that build trust
online safety and the shifting boundaries of truth and verification
My goal is to make communication feel less like a mystery. At times, it is like art. But many times, there is a science (of sorts) to it with clear principles that have stood the test of time. Communication can be something you can understand, design, and use to bring people together. Whether it’s family, work or your communities.
Who This Is For
This newsletter is for people who think carefully about how messages shape meaning. You may be parents, family members, leaders, teachers, communicators, and lifelong learners in Australia , USA, or around the world, from all walks of life and faiths.
If you value clarity and substance over hype, you’ll feel at home here.
This is for anyone who:
sees communication as strategy, not decoration
understands that clarity builds trust, and trust builds everything else
wants to make sense of technology and the age of disruption we’re now in
appreciates the role of history in teaching us lessons for the present and the future
If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, Why aren’t people hearing what we mean?, you’re in the right place.
Published Weekly
Free insights on communication, clarity, credibility, and connection in the age of AI.
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