Founding and selling di:ga and mentoring new CEO
I set up di:ga Strategy and Communications in 2012 having worked as a national newspaper journalist and in senior communications roles at Global Witness and Oxfam. Eleven years in I sold the successful business to an Employee Ownership Trust, and stepped down as CEO in July 2025.
I didn’t set out to build a company that I would go on to sell, but there was a lot of demand for our offer and over time the team grew and developed a reputation that went beyond me. From the outset, we focused on building a sense of shared responsibility – ‘leadership at every level’ was a term we coined to convey how everyone had the opportunity to shape it and contribute to its success. We also developed a di:ga service standard, which helped us define and then deliver on the qualities we felt set us apart as an agency.
In 2021, we began the move towards a change of ownership and started to think about succession planning. I worked with our senior team, external coaches, facilitators and mentors, to explore options. We worked hard to define the CEO role and what we needed, and to map the skills in the existing team against the role. We set a timeline with key milestones and conditions that would need to be met for me to leave. We ran an open recruitment, and gave internal candidates the opportunity to apply. One staff member put her hat in the ring, and – in a very competitive field - was ultimately successful in being appointed CEO. It was a rigorous and fascinating process, defined by honesty and transparency, which produced an excellent outcome. I now mentor the new CEO, as well as chairing the board.
“Amy built di:ga on the principle that doing excellent work and living your values don’t have to be in conflict. The rigorous, transparent transition process she led showed that same commitment. She created the conditions for genuine shared ownership and leadership with real care and attention to what the business and the team needed. What she handed over was a company with real clarity of purpose and the infrastructure to sustain it beyond any one leader. Her mentoring and coaching in the post-transition phase has also been invaluable, she remains available without hovering, challenges me to think strategically, and trusts me to lead in my own way.”
