Like most people, Harry Wynne-Williams viewed the events of 11 September 2001 with horror and a sense that they would change the world irrevocably. What he could not have foreseen then, however, was that the effect on his own life would be for him to end up working in strategic communications, with a brief, among other things, to mitigate and experience first hand some of the global fallout stemming from that event.
‘Unfortunately one of the main legacies of 9/11 has been a perceived contest between ‘Western values’ and ‘Islam’’, he says. ‘Having since worked in Iraq and other Islamic countries, I know from experience that this is a myth. The majority of people around the world want the same basic things in life.’
Wynne-Williams first visited Iraq as a freelance journalist in the summer of 2004. ‘My first commission to Iraq was bizarrely from Management Today, who wanted a piece on ‘Doing business in Iraq’!’ As an enterprising freelancer, he contacted BBC Radio 4 offering his services while out there and ended up filing pieces for the World at One and PM.
A former Welsh Guards officer, Wynne-Williams then learned that his old regiment were to carry out a 6 month operational tour of Iraq. Having approached the Guards to ask if he might ‘embed’ with them as a reporter, they asked him to join them as a reservist for the tour in order to conduct their ‘Information Operations’. After carefully considering the implications of ‘jumping the other side of the fence’ from reporting and weighing the risks and strains of leaving his family for 6 months in an often dangerous environment, he took up the challenge.
‘In hindsight, I’m glad to say that it was one of the best career decisions I’ve ever made’, he says. ‘It taught me so much about the range of influences that affect peoples’ attitudes and behaviours in such conditions and about how you can best exert your own influence. Typically, the emotive holds far greater sway than the rational’.
After completing his tour with the Army, Wynne-Williams conducted some more journalism in the Middle East for BBC Radio 4, before being introduced to Bell Pottinger Sans Frontieres. He began consulting for BPSF in January 2006 before joining full-time in June 2007.
‘I enjoyed being a journalist but part of me wanted to do something more than just to comment or observe and I use many of the same skills in my current job’, he concludes. ‘I’ve been blessed to end up in exactly the right place. A lot of the work I do really matters at the most basic human level. You can’t do this job dispassionately; you have to be fundamentally happy in your work. And luckily, I am’
Wynne-Williams is married with two young children and lives in Fulham.
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