About Chris Mitchell
I started in newsrooms, so I know what makes a story land.
I’ve been writing the same kind of thing, just from the other side of the email, ever since.
I trained as a broadcast journalist at Leeds, working in news, and quickly learned the only thing journalists really care about.
Have you given me a story that’s actually a story, told properly, and relevant to my audience? That grounding has shaped every piece of work I’ve done since. It’s why I lead with the angle, not the announcement, and why the work tends to land where it matters.
Fifteen years on, the craft is the same. The channels have multiplied, the audiences now include search engines and AI, but the question a good story has to answer hasn’t changed at all.
The last five years rearranged most of what I thought I knew about work and life.
As Covid hit, I lost two-thirds of my business in a week.
Our second son, Alfie, was born with Down syndrome.
Rachel and I got married.
We moved house. That November, Alfie was diagnosed with leukaemia.
In December, he finished a two-year course of treatment.
In April, he rang the bell.
I worked through all of it. Not to prove anything, but because I had to provide for my family, and the work was one of the things that held steady when very little else did. Clients I’d had for years stayed with me. New ones came on. The business had its two strongest years on record.
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A lot of what I'm good at, I'm good at because of what's happened, not despite it. The judgement, the steadiness, the ability to read a situation and know what's worth saying and what isn't.
Why I’m telling you this
The work is about people trusting me with how and where they’re seen. That runs on judgement and character, not transactions.
That’s also why the next phase matters. Our third son arrives in August. Alfie is in remission and starting school.
I want to build a consultancy, and a community of clients, that’s worth the time I spend away from them: doing work I’m proud of, for people I respect, and being successful enough at it that I can keep showing up. For my family. For my clients. And for the Down Syndrome and childhood cancer community.
Same craft I've been doing for fifteen years. Different reasons. Now, more important than ever.
Credentials
- BA (Hons) Broadcast Journalism, Leeds Trinity University
- Member, Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)
- Fifteen-plus years across property, hospitality, early years, architecture, financial and professional services
- MSc Management & Marketing, Nottingham Business School
- Founder, RedTree PR Ltd (Established 2013)
- Runner, golfer, trustee and family man