Stephen Waddington
Stephen is a business advisor and troubleshooter who helps organizations with planning, strategic decision making and execution. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of Wadds Inc.
Stephen has held the role of Visiting Professor in Practice at Newcastle University since 2015, supporting the university and students through teaching and mentoring. He is a PhD research student at Leeds Business School where he is investigating the contribution of public relations to management.
Stephen was previously managing director at Metia Group (2019-2020), an international digital marketing agency. It creates high performance campaigns using research, content, demand and earned media. His clients included Amazon, BMW, Capita, Salesforce and Microsoft.
He was Chief Engagement Officer at Ketchum (2012-2018), an Omnicom-owned agency, responsible for driving the integration of digital and social capabilities in client engagements across the agency’s international network. He provided lead senior counsel on integrated global accounts including IBM, IKEA and Phillips.
Stephen originally trained as an engineer and a journalist before following a career in public relations. He co-founded, managed, and sold two award-winning public relations agencies, Rainier PR in 1998 and Speed in 2009.
Stephen is Past President of the CIPR, Chartered PR Practitioner, a CIPR Fellow (Hon), a member of the IoD, and a member of the IPRA.