Ed King (PhD)

Consulting Director, Ogilvy

Ed King is a Consulting Director in the Sustainability Practice at Ogilvy Consulting. He works extensively on policy-focused challenges,. Ed has worked with governments and NGOs to develop integrated communication campaigns with deep roots in research and citizen engagement across a number of different development areas, from malnutrition to gender equality.

Most recently, he has worked as a consultant for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working across a number of projects from developing public-private approaches to malnutrition in Nepal, through mobilising benchsitter audiences on gender equality in India and Kenya to advocating for foundational literacy and numeracy in policy-making across Sub-Saharan Africa.

He has also worked extensively with the UK’s largest health philanthropy, The Health Foundation, on developing a multi-stakeholder partnership to address health inequalities. Common to all these projects is the need to help organisations deliver impact by helping them understand their audience and the power of communications to affect behaviour change.

Ed has also been part of the teaching faculty for the Masters in Public Policy at the University of Oxford, where he has been part of a WPP team teaching communications for public policy delivery, with a focus on disinformation.

He joined Ogilvy after working for WPP’s Government Practice where he worked with the UK Cabinet Office on capability development and best practice. Ed authored WPP’s The Leaders’ Report, Increasing Trust through Citizen Engagement, a study of how governments in over 50 countries are struggling to effectively engage citizens and steps they can take to improve. Before that, Ed worked for Kantar as a researcher, applying both qualitative and quantitative methods to a variety of business challenges.

Ed joined WPP after completing his PhD in English Literature at Yale University. In his spare time he can be found in a book or on a bike.