Kia Popat: An interview with the CGCU's new president

Last term, Kia Popat was elected President of the City and Guilds College Union (CGCU), winning 35% of first preference votes (see “Aside: How Union Elections Work”). This followed a hard-fought campaign, involving dozens of endorsements by fellow committee members and the return of her dog on the campaign trail. I sat down with her at the end of December to find out more about her plans as President.

Kia Popat is already familiar with the inner workings of the CGCU, having played a large role in organising this year’s Welcome Dinner. Alongside this, she has been Vice President and Bolt Bearer of the CGCU since last academic year and is currently treasurer of the Department of Computing Society (DoCSoc), one of most well-funded societies at Imperial.

Despite it being the weekend before her end-of-term exams, Kia was happy to sit down with me to discuss her plans as President of the CGCU. The path to the role for her was unexpected – in her first year at Imperial, Kia was unaware of the organization, but by her second year, she was already a Vice President. She had hoped to have a more passive role this year, holding the role of CGCU Bolt Bearer. All this would change, however, after the resignation of Barry Jiang, elected as President of the CGCU in March 2022. He resigned from the role after a Vote of No Confidence motion was brought against him. His resignation triggered a byelection to elect a new CGCU President.

“A lot of the CGCU committee members were quite like, ‘Well, you know, we’d rather have you’”, Kia tells me when I ask why she ran, “‘as someone who we know, someone who we’ve worked with for this length of time’” And yet, despite this, it wasn’t easy: five candidates ran, and by Kia’s own admission, all of them had the credentials to do the job. The result was an intense campaign – multiple candidates, including Kia, took to Instagram to share endorsements from fellow CGCU members on official campaign accounts. Kia’s dog Cookie made a return to the campaign trail, endorsing – to no one’s surprise – Kia. Cookie has previously endorsed a candidate in the 2022 Leadership Elections for ‘providing treats’. “I hope no one’s voting for me based on my dog”, Kia joked.

Now, a common issue encountered by busy Imperial students is finding time to relax. So, how does Kia relax after a long week managing multiple roles? Having the aforementioned dog for one helps – going on walks with it every day is her main method of destressing. She also emphasises that she finds her role enjoyable and doesn’t consider it added stress.

As for making sure that her committee gets a break, she explains that it’s quite easy to ensure people aren’t working during exam periods due to their varied schedules. She tells me that their internal training pages state that members’ degrees come first. Kia also raises the importance of cross-team communication: “People are very open about, ‘Okay, I won’t be able to do any work now, but I can do the work at this time. This is when I’m free. What can I do then?’”

For committee communications , she admits their current use of many WhatsApp groups and Teams chats is “possibly not the most amazing way of organizing”. One specialised tool did get a mention: Nuclino. This is used as a checklist for repeated events and organisation activities, such as the Welcome Dinner.

On the topic of such events, Kia tells me that the CGCU alumni has a lot of younger experienced members who she can ask for help – “I was actually working with someone who was a previous CGCU president over summer” she informs me. Furthermore, Kia was able to draw on the experiences of Hayley Wong [former CGCU President, now Union President] and Allan Lee [CGCU Treasurer, 2020-2022], who advised her when she helped organise this year’s Welcome Dinner.

Now, what of Kia's manifesto commitments?

“I don’t want to spoil too much” she responds when asked about her promise of more events. Nevertheless, I still manage to get some teasers – namely an event like last year’s TriUnion extravaganza is in the works, with hints the medics could be involved as well. Previously this involved taking students from the City and Guilds, Royal Science and Royal School of Mines Student Union to Cirque Le Soir, a circus-themed nightclub in London – it remains to be seen what this year’s might involve. There is also the return of events the CGCU used to hold before COVID – she has “been in contact with some alumni who were involved in their time [at Imperial]”, perhaps bringing back the week of activities known as “City and Guilds Week”. Such events require funding via sponsorships – Kia explained this could prove difficult, as companies are finding it harder to justify sponsorship in the midst of a cost-ofliving crisis and general price squee

Kia also spoke about helping societies grow their alumni relations in her manifesto, and this is already something she has made strides in. DoCSoc recently launched a new alumni mentoring programme to allow students to meet computing alumni from different fields. Kia informs me this “was actually something that myself and the [DoCSoc] president set up” with the help of the City and Guilds College Association (CGCA), essentially the alumni group for the CGCU:

“We got in touch with people via the CGCA […]” Kia explains, “made them pass the message around, so I think if we could kind of establish something like [DoCSoc mentoring] in a wider range of departments, we do really want to push for that.”

Kia promised in her manifesto to “Establish sponsorship for the CGCU to increase funding”. Asked about this she explains the CGCU team is working on “getting a sponsor proposal ready” to send out, with a few different possible approaches being taken.

As we reach the end of the interview, I ask if she has any advice for anyone looking to get involved with the CGCU: “The office door is always open. So CAGB 350, if someone is in there, they’ll definitely let you in and have a conversation with you about their experience.” As for whether the CGCU has any plans to steal the RCSU’s Mascot. “Theta” – Kia mentions that the CGCU had already made off with it at the start of the Autumn term. Felix looks forward to the teased Tri-Union event, which may offer the RCSU an opportunity to take revenge.