The quiet authority behind serious reputations.
ACA was founded by Amy Cuthbertson and is led with Dr Jonathan Cuthbertson, combining two decades of senior communications experience with genuine scientific and technical depth.
Jonathan brings an Oxford scientific background and around two decades of experience in cyber security, giving ACA a rare ability to understand genuinely complex, technical and scientific subjects from the inside.
Amy has spent more than 20 years working across leading PR and communications agencies, building expert positioning and media relations programmes across healthcare, consumer, finance, government and major brands.
That combination means ACA can get close to the substance of what a client does, not just the story around it, and build communications strategy that holds up under real scrutiny.
Amy and Jonathan lead every account themselves, supported by trusted specialists in social media, digital communications and content where a brief needs them.
Our belief is simple.
The people who genuinely understand important subjects should have a meaningful voice in the conversations surrounding them.
But expertise by itself rarely creates influence.
It needs to be recognised, communicated and connected with the right audiences, including journalists, clients and the AI tools people now ask who to trust.
That’s what we do.
ACA works with a select group of clients, allowing us to understand their work in depth and remain closely involved in strategy and delivery.
Some are individual experts. Others are organisations containing considerable expertise that has never been fully translated into public authority.
In both cases, our job is the same: understand the substance, identify where it can have influence and build the communications strategy that connects it with the people who matter.
We work across healthcare and medicine, technology, cyber security, finance, consumer and entertainment, and workplace and HR, wherever there is real expertise worth building authority around.
THE SENIOR TEAM
Amy Cuthbertson
Founder
Amy has spent more than 20 years in public relations and communications.
Before founding ACA, she worked both in-house and with leading agencies and consultancies across healthcare, beauty, food and drink, entertainment, consumer finance, technology, government campaigns and major consumer brands.
Her career has included work for brands and organisations including Boots, No7, Oral-B, Sony Europe, Epson Europe, HSBC, Capital One, Warner Bros, Disney and the London 2012 Olympic bid.
Today, Amy leads ACA’s communications strategy and media work.
Her particular strength lies in identifying where expertise intersects with the media agenda, finding the angle, story or opinion capable of turning specialist knowledge into sustained editorial opportunity.
She works closely with clients on positioning and strategy as well as delivery, with a focus on building recognition that strengthens authority, deepens trust and supports commercial growth.
Dr Jonathan Cuthbertson
Director
Jonathan brings an unusual combination of scientific training, analytical expertise and extensive professional experience within the cyber security domain.
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An Oxford-trained scientist, he holds an undergraduate master’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry and a DPhil in computational biochemistry and biophysics.
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Alongside his scientific background, Jonathan has around two decades of professional experience. He began his career in analysis before moving into a policy role, and from there into the cyber security domain as a policy and business change adviser, providing support to areas such as incident management and incident response. He then worked as a senior business change consultant, before returning to cyber security through the lens of professional development, building his expertise in learning and development and bringing on the next generation of talent through cyber skills and capability development.
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This included developing professional pathways across specialist cyber security disciplines and leading a major cyber security degree apprenticeship programme through which more than 200 apprentices developed careers in the field.
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At ACA, Jonathan works alongside Amy on strategy and delivery, making sure technical and scientific content is accurate and coaching spokespeople on complex subjects, as well as leading business development and the growth of the agency.
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His analytical background and experience of highly complex subject matter bring particular value to ACA’s work with scientific, medical, technical and cyber security clients.
Why ACA?
We start with the objective.
PR should not begin with the question: where can we get some coverage?
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It should begin with: what are we trying to change?
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That might be awareness, reputation, demand, positioning, recognition, trust, referrals, investment, recruitment or the profile of the people leading an organisation.
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Once we know the destination, we build the strategy around it.
We understand expertise.
Some agencies begin with publicity.
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We begin with what you know.
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We want to understand where your expertise is strongest, what differentiates your perspective, what you can credibly own and where that intersects with the conversations people already care about.
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That matters particularly in medicine, science, technology, finance and other complex fields where credibility cannot be manufactured.
We understand journalists.
Good media relations isn’t bulk emailing a press release.
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It requires understanding what constitutes a story, why it matters now, which journalist is likely to care, what they need to make it work and how quickly an opportunity needs to move.
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Our campaigns combine proactive story development with rapid-response media relations so clients can participate in the news agenda when their expertise genuinely adds something to it.
We think commercially.
Coverage isn't the final objective.
Authority should earn its keep.
It can make a prospective patient or customer feel confident enough to make contact. It can differentiate a specialist from apparently similar competitors. It can put a founder in front of investors, partners or customers. It can create speaking, broadcast and professional opportunities.
It can also make a journalist remember a name the next time a story breaks.
And it can make you the name AI tools suggest when someone asks who to trust.
Over time, expertise can become an asset that contributes to the growth of the organisation behind it.
We stay close to our clients.
ACA deliberately works with a select client roster.
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That gives us the time to understand the people and organisations we represent, including their ambitions, sensitivities, expertise and commercial priorities.
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Senior involvement isn’t reserved for the pitch.
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It continues throughout the relationship.
We can handle complexity.
Not everything can or should be reduced to a simplistic soundbite.
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Medicine, science, finance and cyber security require accuracy, context and judgement.
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Our job is to preserve that substance while finding the story inside it.