PRactically Speaking Houston

PRactically Speaking Houston with Kristoffer Smith

• Veronica V. Sopher, PRSA Member and Host • Season 1 • Episode 5

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 16:39

Welcome Kristoffer Smith to PRactically Speaking Houston – the official podcast of the Houston PRSA Chapter.

Kristoffer Smith is a communications and public relations professional with over 15 years of experience specializing in creative direction, content creation, and production. With expertise spanning school public relations, sports, short films, corporate projects, commercials, promotional videos, news, and photography, Smith has a proven track record of managing cross-platform campaigns, leading teams, and driving brand recognition through innovative multimedia solutions. An award-winning creative with mastery in Adobe Creative Cloud, video production, and digital communication, Smith strives to bring diverse social and cultural experiences to his audiences, aiming to inform, intrigue, and inspire.

Connect with Kristoffer Smith at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristoffer-smith-59728793 
Website: https://kristoffersmith.my.canva.site/

Connect with Veronica V. Sopher at:
Website: https://www.veronicavsopher.com/
Social:@VeronicaVSopher

Learn more about the PRSA Houston Chapter, our events and opportunities at www.prsahouston.org.

PRactically Speaking Houston is brought to you by Veronica V. Sopher, Public Relations.

Veronica Sopher:

Hello and welcome to PRactically Speaking Houston. This is the official podcast of the Public Relations Society of America Houston chapter. I'm your host, Veronica V Sopher, and I have the honor of introducing you to some of our incredible members and talking about all the things that we deal with in public relations, advertising, marketing, communications and all things visibility in the Houston area. So we're going to go ahead and get this episode started, but before we do let's take care of some housekeeping. If you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episode of PRactically Speaking Houston. And if you're watching on YouTube or LinkedIn. Make sure you leave us some comments. We'd love to connect. So let's go ahead and get this episode started. I'm going to introduce the amazing Kristoffer Smith, and he is joining us now. Welcome. Welcome Kristoffer.

Kristoffer Smith:

Hello, Veronica, thanks for inviting me on to practically speaking.

Veronica Sopher:

Awesome. We are so excited about our new podcast here for comms pros in the Houston area, and I'm so glad you're one of the few, first few members getting to be on the podcast, and this is a great opportunity for us to learn more about you. So first and foremost, Kristoffer, how many times do people want to call you Christopher? That's the first thing everybody wants to know.

Kristoffer Smith:

You know, it's all the time. It's Christopher or Chris. And honestly, I go by Chris also, but just professionally, Chris Smith is too vanilla, so I always introduce my myself as Kristoffer Smith. The Disney movie Frozen has helped a lot for Christoph to carry.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah,

Kristoffer Smith:

I'm at that er, and you got me so but yes, Chris is usually fine, and most people get to know me, but professionally, I have to at least distinguish myself some way.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I know. And I always love when we're in a group, and Christopher and I know each other, but when we're in a group, when people read your name tag, I see them want to stumble just a little bit, and they're not quite sure. You know,

Kristoffer Smith:

yes, when you have a complicated name, though, I think you you get used to it. So you don't, you try not to get offended, especially somebody from communications, you know, particularly my job now, I deal with a lot of unique names, so I just, I beg for forgiveness, and I give people that grace. So

Veronica Sopher:

That's awesome. It's so well. I'm so glad you're on. So tell us a little bit, Christopher, about how you got into communications. Your origin story is a fascinating one, and I'm so excited that our listeners are going to get to hear it.

Kristoffer Smith:

So yes, I really got into communication. I guess my origin story started in college, I feel like probably most people, I thought I wanted to go into, like pre pharmacy or biology, and then I got into some of those science courses, and I realized that was way above my head. So I swiftly changed majors. And really just on a whim, I walked into our campus radio station, and I just kind of got hooked. So in college, I ended up having a Jazz Radio show that I hosted for four hours a day, five days a week, which was pretty daunting, just because I was a college basketball player at the same time, so having to do the classes, the practices and still maintain that radio show, but it was really exciting, and it kind of dipped my toe into media. From there, I kind of shifted into more video production, really, because I took a holocaust films class, and I just found it very interesting, the storytelling aspect of of the visuals to go along with that dialog. And ever since then, I've kind of been hooked. I could go on. I don't know how much you want me to ramble, but for me, my background is so diverse from, you know, teaching, broadcasting, animation, teaching graphic design, actually doing live events with the Houston Astros and the Houston Dynamo, Rice University, I used to technical director their live sports for the video boards, and I just kind of, I've been exposed to every element of Communications and Public Relations, and I feel like that's helped me along the way.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I would agree you've had your hands in a little bit of everything, and now you're at U of H. So I'm so excited to get have people get to know you a little bit more, learn about what you're doing. So as the executive director, what are your responsibilities? Now, I know you have, I know you've got a lot of responsibilities. Your titles, Executive Director of Communications for the University of Houston, of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. And yes, I had to read that from the screen.

Kristoffer Smith:

Yes. So I formally, I had most of my communications training in K through 12 education. But coming over to university side is it's similar, but it's different. I feel like being the executive director of communications for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, which is, you know, every unit. University has their own colleges, and at university Houston, all of our colleges have their own communications teams, so we do work with our university level. But my task is really to communicate the messaging of our college, and in my college, particularly, it is unique because we have six different departments inside of our college. So the mathematics, physics, biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. In computer science, we just have so many different subject matters under our umbrella. So from my job is to make sure that I'm telling our very science nuanced message to where the average person at home can understand, which is, it can be very challenging at times, because I don't always understand. But my biggest thing is not my job to be the professional of the content. It's my job to be professional of the message. So that's why I try to strive in my work. So for me, a lot of the work comes with telling the story of our professors and our researchers, because we are a tier one research university at the University of Houston. But also, of course, we're a university educating our students and telling their stories from from how they come up. Some of our students are in some very unique programs, just just to get started on their university experience. And then some of them do some of them do some very interesting research while they're here. So excuse me telling that wide message of our college is really my task.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, and I think that that's probably challenging when you've got multiple audiences, right? When you've got whether you're trying to recruit talent or recruit students, what are some of the tools or some of the nuances that you that you have to use as you are figuring out who your target audience is? What have you brought to U of H, and particularly to the programs?

Kristoffer Smith:

So it may seem very simple, but really the thing I've probably brought the most, I've only been here for about eight months. The thing I've brought the most to our college is just being very vocal about telling our message. We have a lot of very intelligent people at our college, very a lot of very prolific professors in their fields. They're well known in their fields, but a lot of times they get siloed in their research. You know, they're stuck behind those closed doors of their lab and their office, and they're doing all this excellent work, but they're not always very proactive in telling their stories. So me making sure that I'm digging to find what are the unique things they're doing. And of course, like I said, packaging that for our website, for our press releases, for social media, and actually making sure we're getting those messages out and that they don't stop at, I guess, the publication level. If anybody's familiar with scientific research, no publications are kind of the name of the game. And those are great, but those are only hitting that the target audience of the scientists, right? They're not getting a lot outside into the general public, and really, my task has been to get our research in front of the general public, just as much as we are in front of our scientific audience.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, I think that's so very important, because it's almost like you're not B to B, because I know when we've talked to some of our comms colleagues who are more business to business, especially the oil and gas industry, it's so niche, but you've got the task of almost deciphering that and then making sure that Everyday public on the street automatically can relate to what U of H is doing as a tier one university, right? And so that seems way more complicated than than not

Kristoffer Smith:

and really for for the University of Houston for the longest time. And we don't necessarily love this label, but it is a good label to have. We've been the best kept secret when it comes to our area of the country in terms of our educational value that we provide our students, but we are at the point as a university. We don't want to be that secret anymore. We want to make sure everybody is well aware of the opportunities that are present now right around the corner for most of us, because we are a large commuter campus, but we want people to know you can come here and get a world class education and still be within your neck of the woods. And, quite frankly, US piggybacking off of our sports kind of helps, you know, March Madness and you're in those college bowl games and all those things, you know, all eyes are on you, so we kind of use it also to our advantage.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, no, I think that's so very true. So Kristoffer, as you think about being a PRSA member and tapping into some of the local talent, are there any type of collaborations or partnerships you're looking for, especially for your college or for your team there in the communications department?

Kristoffer Smith:

Oh, so. For me, I'm always open for new opportunities. I think one of one of the things that I definitely want to leverage as I'm going getting more I've gotten my feet on the ground, if you will, at the university, want to kind of leverage our Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston also, so we can get some of those up and comers and our communications field and get them into some real world experiences outside of necessarily the classroom environment. For me, that building is literally like the next building over. So it's not, it's not very hard to go and get some of those interactions, but it's just building those systems so that we're able to kind of work them into what we're doing. So like I said, they can get the exposure, they can get the experience. So just to see what it's like in an actual communications environment, I will say, from my experiences, and I'm sure from all of our professionals, every device, every environment, is unique. Even though you're the way you go about doing your job may be similar, you know, it's just the nuances of the industries that you're in, so kind of, yeah, helping them just be acclimated to that and just the processes of at least what we do at the University of Houston is something I strive to do. But also we're looking to partner with Houston public media. They're a great resource in the Houston area that a lot of people don't know about. One of the things we want to use with them is is implement their podcast facility. HPM has some really awesome studios for video production, but also audio production, and we're definitely in talks with them of kind of getting our message out there for them, because I know they can, they can provide full production, and that's something we look to leverage.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, no, that's so you're so lucky that you've got that in house, or at least right next to you. That's fantastic. So tell us, Kristoffer, switching gears just a little bit. Tell us about your role with prsa, and what your committee is going to be doing and what you look forward to for 2026

Kristoffer Smith:

Yeah, so for for 2026 for me, I am excited, because this is kind of my first was parade into working with PRSA more consistently. I, like I said, I came from K 12. I was more involved with teaspoon, which is kind of that, that sorry. Pub ed at the grade level organization for communications. For me, it's time for me to spread my umbrella. So being in PRSA, I look to definitely be more involved. But for me, I'm actually going to be the chair of our scholarship community, which is in line. I'm at the University of Houston. I'm close by, so people will be those young members will definitely be able to reach out to me, and we look to like I said, get, get our young folks and opportunities to succeed. And I think one of the biggest parts of not only monetarily having that, that benefit of being able to get a PRSA scholarship, but just building the relations, I think, well, they know from life experience, your relations are what are really going to carry you. Whether you decide to go into industry with a company, or you decide to go on your own and build your own PR firm, is the relationships to really sustain you and really elevate you and and one of the things I think people like find, they assume, or assumptions that people make of our communicators, or that our communication love to to communicate, and I mean that communicate like on a personal level and right, right in the industry, that's not often. So I know myself, I'm not necessarily somebody who's very, very very outgoing at first, but once I get to know people, then I can, can do that. So I want to encourage our young folks and our folks in the PR community to to not only be a communicator in your profession, but also be a communicator in your collaborative life in being able to reach Yeah, so true.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah. No, that's so very true. I always find it amazing when people were networking and they say, Oh, well, I'm an introvert and I'm like, but you're in communications. How are you an introvert? But it's true. A lot of us are just wired differently. What we do and how we show up professionally may seem one way, but maybe how we are on the on the inside, it's a little bit different. Well, I'm so excited about the scholarship committee, and I have to say, as a recipient many, many, many years ago of a PRSA scholarship, the work that you guys do is so very, so very important for our young folks coming up, and we have very active PRSSA members at our universities. So that's exciting. Kristoffer, how do you want people to connect with you if we're looking to grow our network with our PRSA and communication colleagues in the area, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Kristoffer Smith:

Think the best way to connect with me will be on my LinkedIn account. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. As a matter of fact, I think I was looking at the recap for 2025 and I think it said I came in contact with you the most during the year. But I think LinkedIn is probably the best. If you ever pull me up, you'll see me on the portrait with red. I kind of like my red. My scheme for my own personal branding is usually red and black. So if you type in Kristoffer Smith, you see red and black, you know it's gonna be me.

Veronica Sopher:

That's awesome. I love it. Well, Kristoffer, 2026 is going to be incredibly exciting for all of us, and I just appreciate the work that you and your committee are doing for our organization. It makes a world of difference for everybody. And folks, I will definitely be putting Kristoffer's LinkedIn in the show notes, so you can be sure to connect with him. Any parting words for us as we wrap up this episode?

Kristoffer Smith:

I think the parting thing for me is again, be outgoing. Get out there, meet people, mingle, even if it's taking you outside of your comfort zone, that's fine. Get out there. Experience different elements of communication, because it's going to open your eyes to new possibilities and always be open to learn.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, absolutely great, great advice. All right, Kristoffer, well you have a great 2026 and let all of our members know if they can help you with that scholarship committee?

Kristoffer Smith:

Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Veronica Sopher:

You bet. All right, that wraps up this episode of practically speaking. Houston again, I'm your host, Veronica Sopher, and we love to connect with all of our members, so if you are watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments. And if you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episodes of the official podcast for the Houston chapter of PRSA, PRactically Speaking, Houston,