Our founder’s story

16 June 2025

I blinked. And eleven years went by.

The early days of steering Mindfully Wired – notoriously me and two cats in a broom cupboard, in a tiny fisherman’s cottage near the sea – are completely tangible to me even now, more than a decade on from starting a journey with absolutely zero tools to navigate it. Early MW was all instinct, intuition and obsession. I’d worked in comms – kind of. Mostly I worked in policy and politics, and had a deep sense of frustration at the lack of connection between knowledge, people, decision-making and action. Mostly I dreamed, ate and slept with the ocean on my mind.

Hence: an agency that wasn’t an agency. Just a growing collective of other ocean obsessives with an unbelievable array of skills. The most personable people you’d ever meet. Career scientists. Organisers. Writers. Artists. No ‘agency growth strategy’ – just a group of people who couldn’t say no to meaningful work where insight and creativity seemed poised to drive real change. No time to think about what it was that was growing.

I did a lot of my personal and professional growing up on the job, too. A vertical learning curve from mid-twenties to mid-thirties I’m not sure I’d recommend (top tip: in any career, early on, GET A MENTOR. Learn from well-walked paths). Perhaps the most profound period of growth and change has been in the past four years – MW had to weather the post-COVID adrenaline drop with me taking six months maternity leave. The team got bigger, but also tighter knit. We started to question what we were and how to best articulate our quixotic offering and our obvious purpose: to do the right thing better, for communities and the planet. All the time we were too busy doing work that excited us to strategise for what was round the corner. I realised MW was still evolving, and there were ways we needed to step into a ‘sector’, structure ourselves appropriately and own what we could do in a way that translated to the broadest array of people and organisations.

Just over a year ago we committed to agency life in a big way – MW was lucky enough to lure the inimitable Kathryn Martino into the fold to be our MD, bringing decades of comms, campaigning and behaviour-change experience, alongside commercial nous and a plan to help us showcase what we are. Since then, our senior team has grown with incredible PR pedigree and career conservationists working hand-in-hand; bringing new perspectives and new breath and depth to the areas we can work in. It’s a special mix – it’s not ‘normal’ agency staffing, but it’s totally Mindfully Wired.

The result of that is that today, we get to shout about a shiny new website, a new look for our brand and a new way to talk about ourselves: as a cause and effect comms agency. The bit that excites me most are these two unparalleled phrases that sum us up so beautifully: ‘Matchlessly expert; movingly creative’ and ‘Inside-out knowledge; outside-in thinking’. Tingles.

The rebrand is mindboggling. Running an agency is an accident – but, it turns out, the right tool for the kind of job I wanted to do eleven years ago, that still really needs doing. The best bit? This is a moment to celebrate the cast of Mindfully Wired – from broomcupboard cats to the incredible team of twenty in the office today, and every single person in-between – who have brought a particular kind of expertise-driven magic to environmental comms (especially the blue kind) since we decided that science + creativity = essential to making the change we want to see.

If you’re still reading this, you’re so kind for indulging me at this moment of genuine sentimentality and excitement for the future. And if you’ve been part of the journey so far, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.