Kate Hartley is the co-founder of Polpeo (www.polpeo.com), a crisis simulation company that helps some of the biggest brands in the world prepare to deal with a crisis as it breaks and spreads over social and digital media. She is the author of ‘Communicate in a Crisis’ (Kogan Page, 2019), a book that explores the changing way people behave in crisis situations, and how organisations respond. 

Kate has 25 years’ agency-side experience in crisis and reputation management and corporate PR, and is a trainer in crisis communications for the PRCA, the UK’s PR industry association. She has spoken at and run crisis workshops at international events including SXSW, The Global PR Summit, PR Week’s Crisis Comms, and Social Shake Up, and she is a visiting lecturer at various universities. Kate is a member of the CIPR and a Fellow of the PRCA, and was named in PRovoke Media’s Innovator 25 EMEA list in 2021.