Former NHS Digital employee to launch her own agency

Kristina Wilcock has worked in various communications roles within the NHS for the last 10 years. She has now taken voluntary redundancy from her position as assistant head of external comms at NHS Digital, to launch her own agency in Leeds, Gifted Media Relations. Her agency aims to help its clients prepare and respond to media interest of any nature, ranging from developing in-house PR skills and providing media training to providing hands-on support.
Ms Wilcock said: “The NHS is as politically emotive as it is complicated in respect of media relations and I’ve been lucky to work with journalists and colleagues on a broad church of subjects over the years, from hospital death rates and patient data-sharing to major cyber-attacks like WannaCry. Health IT and issues like cyber security aren’t going away, quite the opposite, so I’d like to take my experience and apply it to industry with a slightly less anodyne approach than our public sector often demands. Now feels like the right time and I’m excited to get cracking. Having worked in press/PR for 20 years I have a clear idea of what I wanted from an external firm but could never get – a strong one-to-one relationship from the start and media-specialist services, from training to press-office audit and crisis management, tailored and based on knowledge, rather than the broader comms integrated model. I want to fly the flag for media relations as a specific skill set and bring through a new generation of professionals as we grow.”