A message from CEO Debby Penton

I’m super excited to announce that Wildfire is now proudly a 100% employee-owned business.

By selling our shareholding back to the business, COO Andrew Shephard and I are preserving Wildfire for the future and, most importantly, securing the culture we’ve been nurturing for years. A culture that can grow from strength to strength in an agency that is truly run with its people, and their development and wellbeing, first.

Employee ownership will help Wildfire realise our ambition of being one of the best agencies to work with — and for — in the UK. We are committed to making a positive difference for our people, society, and the environment, having already been awarded B Corp status last year and becoming a certified Great Place to Work.

For us, employee ownership is the natural next step.

Every agency is defined by its culture. Now, though, our team of employee-owners will have more autonomy over their work, greater transparency on the direction of the business, and more opportunity to get involved and shape our future.

This means we can promise clients an exceptional team of highly motivated and committed professionals, able and willing to deliver outstanding work in which everyone can share success.

The other side to this story is that this move to employee ownership paves the way for Andrew to immediately step down as COO after nearly 30 years with the agency, and for me to gradually and undramatically step back when the time is right, without disrupting the direction of — or vision for — the agency.

We have achieved so much over the last few years — not least winning Technology PR Agency of the Year 2024 last month — and I believe now is the time to capitalise on those achievements.

For at least the next five years, I plan to be fully involved in this exciting new chapter in Wildfire’s story. With all that’s happening, I definitely don’t want to miss out on being a part of that journey.