The Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organized an interactive workshop (for second year Masters students) on Corporate Public Policy by Ms. Aabha Sharma on October 17, 2025. Ms. Sharma is an alumnus of the Department of Political Science, having completed her Integrated Master’s in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad (2009-2014 batch). Later, she went to the London School of Economics and Political Science to pursue a Master of Science in International Relations. Currently, Ms. Sharma is Deputy General Manager at the Public policy office of the chairman at Bharti Enterprises.
The workshop was chaired by Dr S. Shaji and was attended by faculty members and students. The Head of the Department of Political Science, Prof K K Kailash, formally welcomed the speaker and highlighted the ways in which Ms. Aabha’s career can be considered as a role model for the students who are exploring or planning to go into new areas of practice of Political Science.
Dr S. Shaji gave opening remarks and mentioned the interesting career journey of Ms. Aabha, as well as mapped the interesting and exciting fields of Political Science that she has been engaged with. He talked about the growing expansion of the field of political science as enthusiasts have started to explore different options in the area.
Ms. Aabha Sharma, after the opening remarks by the chair of the workshop, thanked the Department for inviting her to have an interactive session with the students. She shared her experiences of working with several tech giants, gaming companies, software companies, and so on. The focus of the workshop was to mentor the students about different careers in policy whether it would be Corporate Public policy or Government Public policy.
The speaker talked of the possibilities of career paths in the field of political science, like political consultancies, think tanks, International NGOs, as well as in Corporate Public policy, corporate communications, law, industry associations and many more. She also highlighted the importance of industry associations and why Corporate Public policy is important for every sector. Explaining the Corporate Public policy to the students, she described stakeholder mapping which analyses the interests and influence of the stakeholders in the project or in the company.
In the later part of the workshop, the speaker organized an interactive case simulation where the students were asked to prepare and present talking points in a panel discussion on AI in Education: The Automation of Learning Assessment. First, the students were divided into 4 groups, each representing one stakeholder named Government, Corporate, Academia, and Media, respectively. The objective of the panel discussion was to represent the view of the assigned stakeholder to a particular group. The discussion saw great participation and there ensued a good discussion among the group of students, focused mainly on the ways in which Artificial Intelligence is shaping Academia and its impact on the idea of creativity among general students.
The key takeaways of the panel discussion and the workshop were: the creation of policy through personnel involved and discourse and how corporate policy shapes innovation and legitimacy. The speaker thanked all the participants of the panel discussion for their engagement.
The workshop was concluded with a vote of thanks, delivered by Mr Aniket Das, a second-year MA student in the Department of Political Science. In sum, the workshop was an insightful interaction on Corporate Public policy among students.
Prepared by: Mr. Vivek Raj, Second year MA student.