The founder of Nineteen82 on why brands end up saying nothing worth hearing, what the most senior person in the room is really afraid of, and the career nobody can take from you.
Four days into her first PR role after university, as a press officer at London South Bank University, Bianca-Maria Cavuoto found out she was pregnant. She was 24 and six months out of university. “I’d planned to work for a year, save and then go travelling,” she wrote on LinkedIn this month, on her son Jack’s nineteenth birthday. “Yeah, no. Not quite.” There was no maternity package. She and Jack’s father had no money, were at the start of their careers and had only just moved to Stevenage. She went back to work when Jack was five months old and he went to nursery full time.
“My career never fell behind because I never let it,” she wrote. “It went from strength to strength in every role, with Jack by my side.”
The roles bear that out. Five years at Beattie Communications, then five years at Havas Red PR UK, the last of them as Client Partner. On 1 July 2026 she launched Nineteen82, a Leeds-based PR and communications agency she describes as senior and hands-on: it builds and protects reputations, raises the profile of leaders with something to say, creates campaigns and stories people want to talk about, and handles crises and issues “when everything feels like it’s hit the fan.” In her first four weeks she flew back from Germany with the go-ahead for a twelve-month, pan-European, multi-market retainer. She’s known as B.
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Warts and all
She tells stories for a living, and her complaint about most brands is that they don’t tell theirs with conviction and authenticity. After three days at MAD//FEST this summer she wrote up what she’d seen. “I felt like brands just really, really showed off. There was a lack of learnings or takeaways for their audience to leave with. We know you’re great but give us warts and all please, not just the shiny stuff.”
Asked why so many brands end up saying nothing worth hearing, she says they are “so obsessed with doing and saying the right thing that they often forget the bigger picture and context, to help people/audiences/consumers understand the why.” Her advice is to say it. “Be truthful about why a business had to diversify. Be honest about the communications and stakeholder journey you had to go on to reach what you define as success.” A great campaign should be celebrated, she says, “but help us to understand why it means something. Everything has purpose and meaning, even if it’s launching a new flavour cereal or opening a new store in a shopping centre.”
Her example is a fast food chain and a Secret Menu launch aimed at Gen Z. The buzz was real. “TikTok went wild and it was great to see all the UGC,” she says. What went unsaid was the reason. “Of course they need to create campaigns for Gen Z”: under HFSS rules the chain can no longer directly appeal to children, and Millennials, in her telling, grew up treating fast food as an occasional treat and are careful about what they feed their own children. The campaign made sense. The brand never explained why.
The audience has moved the same way. Edelman’s 2025 Brand Trust report found that trust now sits alongside price and quality in purchase decisions, and that when a brand stays silent on something people expect it to address, most assume it is hiding something. “Consumers are increasingly seeing through the fluff and looking for the why, so don’t make them ask,” B says. “Provide it upfront.”
Providing it is the job she set up an agency to do.
What the client can’t do
When a new client brings her a reputation that needs protecting, the first thing she does is step back.
Take a step back and do what the client can’t do, look at the bigger picture and the world in which they exist.
Bianca-Maria Cavuoto, Founder and Managing Director, Nineteen82
Brands and organisations bring in agencies for perspective, she says, not only as extra resource. “I’ve been in-house and it’s easy to exist with blinkers on, which inevitably means not being able to understand macro context.” Senior counsel brings exactly that, “but with the confidence of being able to do ‘the do’.” She’s clear about what experience does and doesn’t buy. “It doesn’t mean we get it right the first time but experience, knowledge and years of experience means we’re more confident and quicker in finding a solution that works for the client.”
She set up on her own to deliver both halves, the counsel and the doing, “and not be restricted by hierarchy or ‘extra curricular’ activities that don’t benefit me or my career.” Where she sees the results most clearly is in a workshop room.
The most senior person in the room
“I see the most results from the work I do in delivering media training workshops,” B says. She’s worked with every level, from the C-suite to subject matter experts.
The most senior in the room often have the most worries and anxiety about how they come across in interviews, keynote speeches or panel discussions because they are so senior and are the ‘face’ of the business.
B, Founder and Managing Director, Nineteen82
The workshops are interactive and look at “the good, the bad and ugly”, in what she calls “a safe space where they can be honest and somewhat vulnerable.” “Working with them to refine their delivery, build confidence and show them what good looks like is what I enjoy the most and where I really excel,” she says. “I’m open minded, a good listener and can really read a room so know when to adapt my style of teaching to make sure I get the most out of them.” She has delivered media training for brands including Arla, ManpowerGroup and NBA, “all with their own unique set of needs and requirements from the workshop.”
Ask a colleague for the rule that is most her and she gives you three words: “Preparation is key.” Reading a room, though, is something she learned long before she had a job title.
A Saturday job in Southampton
She landed her first job in 1994, at 12: a Saturday gig in the only Afro hairdressers in Southampton, every Saturday for two years, 8am to 6pm, £10 a day, “washing hair, sweeping floors, making tea and running errands.” The wage makes people shudder now, she has written, but the skills “set me up for life. Showing up for work, looking presentable, being on time, the importance of earning money.” The technical skills mattered more. “I had three younger sisters to take care of after Mum died, each with variations of afro hair that needed looking after and nurturing.” Thirty years on, both of her children have curls of their own that she has taught them to look after and celebrate.
The person who pointed her at PR was Pat Lawson, her careers advisor at college. “She took me under her wing when I started college and we had a great relationship. I went off to study HR at university and knew it wasn’t right. She suggested PR and here I am today.” A 2:1 in PR from Leeds Beckett followed, with a third-year placement at Hertfordshire Constabulary, then the press office at London South Bank University. Her career has since taken in Beattie Communications and Havas Red PR UK, where she spent five years and left as Client Partner. “I have a handful of working days left before I step into the next phase of my career,” she wrote in June. “Happy Friday and stay sassy LinkedIn.”
Leaving taught her something she couldn’t see from inside.
Not doing as she’s told
Asked for a hard moment at work, she gives one from inside a network. “I made a decision based on what my team needed much to the dismay of the Senior Leadership Team. I stood by my decision which earned me a reputation for not doing as I’m told. I have no regrets, I know I did the right thing for the benefit of the team.”
Running her own agency has changed what she can see. “I see the bigger picture of my career, how far I’ve come, what clients really want and that relationships really are as important as we think they are.” Nineteen82 launched with a portfolio of clients who had all worked with her before. “I’m confident that says it all,” she says.
I’ve always been ambitious, straight talking, brave, bold and curious but now I get to be all of those when I want and when it suits me and my own clients.
B, Founder and Managing Director, Nineteen82
Being all of those has not always been comfortable in her industry. At the end of September she spoke at Women in PR’s “Are we obsessed with being likeable?” event in Manchester. “I have so many thoughts and examples about life as a black woman who works in an industry that continues to not do enough to drive diversity,” she wrote beforehand. “A career in the creative fast lane where I’ve often had to overcompensate to be liked, seen, heard and recognised.” The numbers sit behind her. The CIPR’s PR Population Report, published in 2024 from Census data, found that 87 per cent of UK PR practitioners are white and 3 per cent are Black, and that at director level the profession is 90 per cent white.
“I won’t be worrying if the audience likes me,” she wrote. “I’ll be focused on showing up as my true self.”
Where B Is Now
Nineteen82 is in its first year. Her first month as a founder, told in pictures on LinkedIn, included the go-live day spent at her newest client’s event (“I literally tasted my freedom and it was as liberating as hell”), a PRWeek write-up, a personalised jersey from a client that is being framed, and a trip to Birmingham for the fourth year running to watch Jack represent West Yorkshire in the 200m, “first time sans laptop.” Then Germany, and the twelve-month retainer. “I know it won’t be this eventful every month,” she wrote, “however I’m going to enjoy the success of my first four weeks.”
What she wants this piece to do is straightforward, and it is about more than Nineteen82. “I’m really keen to showcase that success comes in different shapes, sizes and careers,” she says. “We see so much ‘familiar’ success and by that I mean, success defined by salary, job title or even type of organisation you work for.” She wants readers to understand her hurdles, and possibly relate to them, and she wants to hear from people “who would be keen to work with me because they see me as a good cultural fit.” If you are looking for senior PR and communications consultancy, as she put it at launch, “or fancy a coffee and a chat about your next story, my inbox is always open.”
Asked for one thing outside work that belongs in the piece, she chose this: “As painful and tough as divorce is, I found strength that I never knew I had.” The tattoo she got in her first month as a founder says the rest: “I’ll always be a Mum first.”
What’s next, in the one line she’d want quoted: “To live life in my own lane.”
Five Lines from B’s Diary
- I tell a great story.
- We know you’re great but give us warts and all please, not just the shiny stuff.
- Preparation is key.
- My career never fell behind because I never let it.
- To live life in my own lane.
From the Diary of Bianca-Maria Cavuoto
Bianca-Maria Cavuoto is a Leeds-based PR and communications consultant and the Founder and Managing Director of Nineteen82.
| Role | Founder and Managing Director, Nineteen82 |
| Based in | Leeds, England |
| Previously with | Havas Red PR UK, Client Partner (2021 to 2026). Beattie Communications (2015 to 2020) |
| Also | Media training for brands including Arla, ManpowerGroup and NBA |
“I tell a great story.”
Editor’s note
Executives Diary features Bianca-Maria Cavuoto because her argument about brands is one she applies to herself. She asks brands for the warts and all, and her own account of a career built with a five-month-old in nursery, a Saturday job at 12, and a reputation for not doing as she’s told gives the reader exactly that. Nineteen82 launched with clients who had already worked with her, which is the evidence for the service she describes. What convinced the editors is the media training answer: the most senior person in the room worries most, and she knows what to do about it.
Executives Diary, Editorial
