Simona Siad Cooper
Campaign Manager
About
<p>Simona Siad has led global campaigns, branding, and advocacy efforts for United Nations’ agencies and NGOs, working to draw attention, drive action, and generate support and shifts in policy to empower rural farmers and communities in Africa and around the globe. In her role at the UN IFAD, Simona pioneered several ground-breaking communications initiatives, including a 360-degree campaign model designed to impact the varied audiences IFAD needed to reach for its fundraising and awareness-raising drives, including media, donors, and governments, and rural people themselves. She has led campaigns for two of the Fund’s most successful replenishments to date via her creative engagement strategies that helped IFAD to achieve two record replenishments, totalling more than USD $2 billion for small-scale agriculture. She is credited for shifting the United Nations to a more diverse model of celebrity engagement and has engaged celebrities across the diaspora on her campaign work for Africa - including British and Sierra Leonean actor Idris Elba, Somali Canadian model Sabrina Dhowre Elba, Nigerian musician Mr Eazi and Rwandan choreographer Sherrie Silver. </p> <p>Her work has earned awards and top-tier global media for the Fund in many media outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg Green, Brookings, The Washington Post, and CNN. Simona has worked as a print journalist for The Toronto Star newspaper, Canada’s largest daily print newspaper, and thestar.com, Canada’s largest online news site. She was part of the team that launched Canadian Immigrant (a national multimedia platform to help new immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to Canada) and built the capacity of journalists in Malawi at The Daily Times newspaper, the oldest paper in the country, with Journalists for Human Rights. Simona holds a Master’s degree in Corporate Communication and Marketing from IE University and business school in Spain and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from York University in Canada.</p>
Brands
IFC