Victoria O'Byrne

Spear’s Review

‘New Labour royalty’ is the description that one industry peer opts for when discussing Victoria O’Byrne. The adviser worked in corporate communications for the Labour Party under Tony Blair and as a special adviser to Dame Tessa Jowell when she was Olympics minister. 

O’Byrne was also group corporate affairs director at Virgin, where she worked with Richard Branson, and has served as communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 

In 2023 O’Byrne joined Schillings as founding partner of the firm’s communications business, alongside George Pascoe-Watson. 

The venture is not in competition with ‘steady-state PR’, O’Byrne told Spear’s in an interview to mark its launch. Instead, according to CEO David Imison, ‘the thing that knits [the Schillings proposition] together is the client and their high-stakes opportunities and threats’.

He continued: ‘We’re not there for the day-to-day business; we’re there when it’s a particularly big deal [or] a particularly major threat, and they need our expertise in quite an acute moment.’