Hi, I’m Jamie Trees.
I'm a communications and design specialist currently based in Hanoi, Vietnam. Since 2023, I've been the Communications Officer at ICEM — the International Centre for Environmental Management — an international consultancy working across environmental management, biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and water governance throughout Asia and the Pacific.
At ICEM I manage the communications needs of an organization running around 24 active projects at any one time, with roughly 11 to 12 new projects starting each year. The work spans the full range of what communications involves: contributing to strategic communications plans and key messages for major programs, designing report layouts and technical figures, producing event materials and signage, managing the organization's website, running social media across multiple platforms, and scripting and filming documentary videos.
Before ICEM, I worked independently as a photographer and videographer in Los Angeles from 2019 to 2022, producing visual content across commercial and editorial contexts. Prior to that I acted as the Art Director at a media production company in Vietnam. My academic background is in economics and film from the University of Pittsburgh, with a semester at Birkbeck, University of London.
The thread across these roles has been a consistent interest in the relationship between content, visual communication, and how organizations present themselves and their work to the world. The environmental and sustainable development sector is where that interest has found its most substantive application.
How I Work
My approach to communications work starts with understanding the purpose behind it, what an organization is trying to achieve, who the audience is, and what those audiences actually need to hear. Design and production decisions stem from that foundation, rather than leading it.
I'm comfortable working simultaneously across the strategic and production ends of communications, taking a holistic approach to build processes that expand the work's reach beyond the sum of its individual pieces. I like working on a team where we can build off of each other’s energy and a united vision, and I am used to producing communications outputs while juggling branding requirements, multi-stakeholder review processes, and technically complex subject matter.