About This Episode
In our latest episode of Change Makers, Michael Hayman sits down with one of Britain’s most battle-hardened communications experts and BPI Senior Advisor, Guto Harri CBE, to explore what great leadership really looks like under pressure.
Guto has spent decades on the frontline of change at home and around the world – from covering the fall of the Berlin Wall to sitting in the heart of Downing Street.
In this conversation, Guto draws on a career spanning media, politics and business to share what every leader needs to know: why reputation must be built long before a crisis hits, why all business is now political, and why the strategic communications adviser is moving closer to the top table than ever before.
The question for every leader is whether they’re ‘match fit’ for a changing world.
Guto Harri
Guto is an impactful and battle-tested communications expert with experience in some of the toughest roles in politics and corporate life. As a UK Senior Advisor for BPI, he clients and business leaders face the increasingly complex set of issues at the intersection of politics, media, and communications.
Guto has experience as a correspondent, presenter, pundit, newspaper executive and communications director in politics, media, and the corporate world. He has advised Presidents, Prime Ministers, and chief executives in many fields.
Having graduated from The Queen’s College, Oxford, he pursued an 18 year career at the BBC, where he presented some of its flagship tv and radio shows, was posted to Rome and New York and became its Chief Political Correspondent. He left to be Boris Johnson’s spokesman and chief of staff at the London Mayoralty moving on to work for Rupert Murdoch on the executive of NewsUK. He then advised a range of independent clients before joining Boris Johnson in Downing Street in 2022 as the No10 Director of Communications.
Guto is a Director of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, sits on the advisory board of SXSW London, was a Director of the Hay Festival and served on the board of S4C television.
Guto volunteers for the RNLI and is trained in casualty care. He helped the NHS as a vaccinator during the covid pandemic. He enjoys cooking, rowing, sailing and Padel.
