Last South Asian Heritage Month, I posted my story for the first time. The short version: first in my family to go to university, a Biotechnology degree I didn’t expect to lead here, twenty-five years in charity communications, and a consultancy I’d just started building.

A year on, it felt right to update it, not because the story has changed, but because a fair bit has happened since then, and this month is as good a reason as any to take stock properly rather than let it pass quietly, as I suspect a lot of us do.

The part that hasn’t changed

I’m still a proud Mauritian, a Mauri-Brit, if you like a hyphen. My parents came to the UK from Mauritius with very little and built a life here through a kind of resilience I didn’t fully appreciate until I was old enough to try building something of my own.

I was the first in my family to go to university. There was no roadmap for that, and no one to ask what it was supposed to look like. I studied Biotechnology and Genetics (At 7 years old I wanted to an optician – that is another story!), then found my way into science communications almost by accident, starting as a press officer, writing releases and pitching stories I cared about. Twenty-five years later, I’d become a Director of Communications, leading global teams and campaigns for causes that mattered to me.

None of that is new. But it’s still the ground on which everything else stands, so it seemed worth saying again rather than assuming everyone remembers.

The part that has

This year, I’ve kept building. VS Comms is no longer a new idea; it’s a working consultancy, and I’m currently leading communications for Peace Brigades International UK and supporting the Separated Child Foundation with their Comms strategy, alongside other clients.

I’m a Trustee of CharityComms, and I’m currently the trustee sponsor for their Brand and website refresh – all my experience goes into supporting them from a governance point of view. 

I launched The Comms Collective, a podcast where I get to sit down with people shaping our sector – including a brilliant conversation(coming soon) with Advita Patel about confidence and burnout in comms, which is exactly the kind of conversation I wish someone had had with me twenty years ago.

And in June, I spoke at Gallagher’s 2026 Communications Summit in London about building leadership capability during continual transformation – a topic that, honestly, describes most of my own year rather well.

I’m not listing these to keep score. I’m listing them because I spent a long time believing that personal story and professional achievement had to sit in separate boxes, that talking about where I come from was one kind of post, and talking about what I’d built was another. I don’t believe that anymore. They’re the same story.

Why mentoring sits at the centre of this, not the edge

If there’s one thing I’d want people to take from this post, it’s not the client list or the summit talk. It’s the mentoring.

I mentor through CharityComms and Women in PR, and I reverse-mentor senior leaders on race and equity – conversations that go in both directions, which is exactly the point. None of that is new this year, but it’s the part of my work I’ve come to value most, and the part I think matters most to say out loud during South Asian Heritage Month specifically.

I was the first in my family to go to university with no one to ask what came next. I know what it’s worth to have someone a few steps ahead willing to answer the question honestly. If you’re early in your career, in comms or otherwise, and could use that – my door is open. It costs me an hour, and it has never once felt like a cost.

Why I’m telling this story again

This year’s official theme for South Asian Heritage Month is Unity in Diversity, the idea that what connects South Asian communities across very different histories and geographies is as worth celebrating as what makes each of them distinct.

I think the same is true at a smaller scale, in a single career. The lab and the press office. The global campaigns and the one-person consultancy. The client work and the mentoring. They don’t sit apart from each other as neatly as I once assumed. They’re one story, told from a few different angles depending on who’s asking.

So that’s this year’s update: same roots, a few new routes, and a standing invitation, to work together, or just to talk.

Vishnee Sauntoo is the Founder of VS Comms and a strategic communications consultant with 25 years’ experience working with charities, not-for-profits, and mission-led organisations. She is a Trustee of CharityComms and hosts The Comms Collective Podcast. vishnee@vscomms.co.uk