What the Gulf Knows

The Take with Ethel Mwedziwendira is a monthly conversation with the professionals redefining how their industries operate. Every issue spotlights one person doing work worth knowing about, across fields and across regions.

There are professionals who work within the systems they inherit. And there are those who look at an entire region's approach to internal communications and decide someone needs to document it, because nobody has.

Kateryna Byelova is the latter. As CEO and Principal Consultant of Sage XP, she has spent over 18 years building internal communications and culture functions from scratch for organizations of up to 350,000 employees across the Gulf. Earlier this year she published the region's first data-driven study on internal communications and culture development, introducing benchmarks where none had existed before.

I sat down with Kateryna to talk about ambition, perception, and what the Gulf already knows.

What's the conversation you find yourself having most often in your industry right now?

One of the conversations I have most often today is about how internal communication can drive business performance. What I find exciting is that the discussion has evolved. More leaders now understand that internal communication is not just about sharing information. It's about influencing employee behavior, and employee behavior is what ultimately drives business outcomes. That's why I'm hearing more questions about how to build communication strategies that create real impact — whether that's supporting transformation, improving alignment, increasing engagement, or helping organizations achieve their goals more effectively.

In your latest research on Gulf internal communications practices, what did you find that you genuinely were not expecting?

There's often a perception that internal communication practices in the Gulf are still developing. What I found was quite different. Many communication leaders are already focused on topics that organizations in North America and Europe are actively debating today: measurement, employee experience, leadership communication, culture, and business impact. The difference is that many Gulf organizations are navigating these challenges while also undergoing rapid growth and large-scale transformation. That creates a unique environment where communication is not just a support function, but an important enabler of change. For me, the biggest surprise was the level of ambition. There is a real desire to move the profession forward and position internal communication as a strategic business function.

Internal communications is often treated as secondary to external PR. Is that a structural problem, a perception problem, or is it actually accurate?

I would actually say that internal communication is often perceived not as secondary to external PR, but as PR for HR. That's a perception I've encountered in many organizations, and I think it overlooks the real purpose of the function. At its best, internal communication is not about promoting HR initiatives or distributing information. It's about helping employees understand priorities, align around goals, navigate change, and take actions that support business performance. External communication influences how people view an organization. Internal communication influences how people work within it. The challenge is that the impact of internal communication is often less visible and harder to measure. But that doesn't make it less important.

When the honest answer to a client's problem is something they are not ready to hear, how do you handle that room?

I usually start by explaining that it's a common challenge for organizations in their industry or at their stage of development. That helps normalize the issue and creates space for a more open conversation about what needs to change.

What's a decision you made early in your career that you'd make completely differently now?

Nothing! All my decisions led me to where I am and who I am now. And I like it

What's keeping you energized right now?

My results, my ideas and sport

Before this conversation I already knew Kateryna was doing important work.

I first met her when we were both speaking at a PR and communications summit in Kuwait, and even then it was clear she is someone who operates at a different level of specificity. What I did not expect was how much her answers would reframe the way I think about internal communications as a discipline. The "PR for HR" observation alone is something I have been turning over since she said it, because it captures a perception problem that most practitioners feel but rarely name that cleanly. That is the kind of insight that only comes from someone who has been inside enough organizations to see the pattern.

She spent 18 years building something in rooms that most of the industry was not watching, and then she turned around and documented it so that others could learn from it. The Gulf is better positioned because of it.