COMMUNICATOR
Having worked in PR and marketing for over 20 years, Sarah enjoys helping organisations to articulate their purpose and optimise performance.
Sarah is a director of Wadds Inc. Prior that she ran Astute.Work, a pioneering hybrid agency bringing together the strongest management consultancy with strategic PR and marketing capability to help organisations engage stakeholders, manage reputation and deliver social impact.
Sarah has extensive experience across the private, public and third sectors and a track record of working with complex organisations. These include NHS Trusts, Health Education England, Combined Authorities and the North East Local Enterprise Partnership. She has provided public relations, marketing and management consultancy to large B2B and B2C brands including Whitbread, Business Link, Greggs plc and Northern Powergrid, as well as charities including The Sunshine Fund and Children’s Cancer North. She is well versed in working with start-ups, including most recently with challenger bank GB Bank and The Sustainability Group, the UK’s answer to B Corp. Over her twenty+ year career she has handled numerous crisis situations for clients and trained many comms teams including at Disney, SAP, Macmillan Cancer Support and Weber Shandwick. Her public affairs expertise ensures she is well plugged into what is happening on a national and regional level.
Prior to establishing Astute.Work she worked for a large regional networked agency and within some of the North East’s leading PR and marketing consultancies helping them to scale, innovate and penetrate new market sectors.
“Sarah worked closely with us on a high-profile political and time-sensitive case. There were many stakeholders involved, all with different needs and opinions. Sarah was impressive at cutting to the heart of the matter, providing excellent strategic advice and balancing the needs of the different parties involved. Sarah is exceptionally professional, prompt, committed, and a real pleasure to work with. If Carlsberg made PR professionals.”
Rupert Croft | Managing Director | Croft Solicitors
Publisher, Podcaster and Speaker
Sarah is a well-respected publisher, podcaster and speaker. Through the #FuturePRoof community she founded to assert the value of public relations as a strategic management function and using a guest contribution model, Sarah has curated, edited and published six books, a white paper characterising the public relations agency business, another exploring the mental wellbeing of the profession and papers on disinformation and influencer marketing.
She launched the #FuturePRoof podcast with husband Stephen Waddington, one of the most popular within the PR sector.
Additionally, Sarah is the host of the My Friends in the North podcast which features interviews with some of the North’s most influential organisational leaders.
Her industry expertise sees her regularly called upon to speak at international conferences and events, as well as provide extensive media commentary on a range of industry matters.
“Sarah’s perspective on the strategic function and future of PR was extremely valuable for our team, as the industry continues to evolve. Sarah came with a fresh and engaging perspective on accountable leadership and provided best practices we could apply to our business and we were lucky to have her.”
Jackie Montesinos Suarez | Strategic Initiatives | SAP North America Communications