Will Painter, Founder and CEO
With over 15 years’ experience as an integrated communications specialist, Will is the owner of WP Communications. Will is deeply invested in every client the business serves providing access to strategic and creative counsel wherever and whenever it’s needed. He is passionate about the power of story telling and how the right communications strategy can drive tangible business impact. He believes in making ‘big creative ideas’ accessible to all.
Under his leadership, WP Communications has grown substantially to a globally recognised agency working for startups, scale ups and large enterprises and producing award winning work across earned, owned and paid media. You can read more about his founder’s story here.
Neil Duerden, Head of Design
Neil is a Head of Design at WP Communications. He has worked for design agencies all over the globe including BBDO, Grey and Saatchi & Saatchi to name but a few for clients ranging from Coke and Google through to P&Q and Unilever.
His work has been seen on all media, across all territories. Each answering the clients brief with an effective creative solutions. Neil has been featured in many creative magazines and his projects have won several accolades.
Richard Crisp, Behavioural Change Specialist
Professor Richard Crisp is an award-winning scientist, writer, and educator. He is Founder of the Behavioural Science Programme at Durham University, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and was recently Durham’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost. His books include The Social Brain: How Diversity Made the Modern Mind and Social Psychology: A Very Short Introduction and he has written many articles on social influence for the national and international press (e.g., The Guardian, Scientific American, THES, HR magazine, Vision Dubai, and The Singapore Times). Richard’s consultancy work includes pioneering approaches in ‘behavioural communications’.
By applying behavioural insights to internal and external messaging he helps organisations frame communications in ways that can energise, engage and influence. Richard has helped clients in a range of industries, including those in the financial and technology sectors, adopt behavioural principles in their communication strategies. In the public sector, he has helped redesign services to improve public health and well-being as well as facilitating pro-environmental behaviour using evidence-based behavioural insights.
Rick Lacroix, Strategic Communications Specialist, U.S. Market
Rick Lacroix is a senior communications leader with over 30 years of experience advising public and private companies.
Rick previously served as Vice President and Head of Global Communications at Cognizant, where he was a member of the Executive Leadership Team and led communications for the company’s global business, supporting a $17 billion organization with more than 280,000 employees.
He has also held senior communications leadership roles at Toptal, Progress Software and EMC Corporation, where he led global teams and supported multi-billion-dollar business units, including EMC’s flagship product divisions prior to its merger with Dell.
Rick has been recognized with numerous industry awards and is based in the Boston area.