Harry & Meghan Hired an Impressive Addition to Their All-Women Senior Staff
With the hire of Fiona Mcilwham, a former British ambassador to Albania, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, became the first royals to employ an all-female team of senior staff.
Other senior staff members include Sara Latham, a former senior adviser in Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign; Heather Wong, a former Obama administration staffer; Natalie Campbell, a former director of The Royal Foundation; and Karen Blackett, chairwoman of MediaCom UK.
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are making history again. With reports of the royal couple hiring Fiona Mcilwham, a former British ambassador to Albania, as their private secretary, Prince Harry and Meghan became the first royals ever to have a team of senior staff made up exclusively of women.
A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on Jun 27, 2019 at 8:14am PDT
Get to know the Duke and Duchess's team below:
Fiona Mcilwham
Mcilwham, who will be replacing Samantha Cohen, will take over the couple's public relations and private affairs. On her public Twitter account, she describes herself as a "diplomat and wannabe supermum."
The Daily Mail reported that Mcilwham became one of the youngest British ambassadors when she was appointed to Albania in 2009 when she was only 35 years old. Now, in addition to serving as Prince Harry and Meghan's chief of staff, she also can add being a part of the first-ever all-female royal senior staff to her CV.
According to ITV, she's expected to join the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (and their son, Archie) on their royal tour of Africa this fall.
Sara Latham
Latham serves as the duke and duchess's head of communications. Previously, she worked as a senior adviser in Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, in which she had a pivotal role in vetting candidates for Clinton's running mate (the Clinton campaign eventually chose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine).
She also worked for Clinton's husband and former U.S. president, Bill Clinton, in the late '90s. Then, she served as the special assistant to the chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of scheduling.
Before becoming head of communications, Latham was already known for her PR prowess. Just before her royal appointment, she was named a managing partner for Freuds, a communications and PR firm.
Heather Wong
Wong, who works as Prince Harry and Meghan's deputy private secretary, can also boast a former employer of the presidential kind. Wong formerly held positions as acting assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration. She also served as the communications director for the Super PAC NextGen Climate. She took her resume international with her appointment as associate director at Milltown Partners, a London-based consulting agency.
Natalie Campbell
Natalie Campbell serves as one of the directors of the Sussex Royal Foundation.
Before joining the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Campbell worked as the director of insight and innovation at the Royal Foundation, according to the Daily Mail. In order to fill her new job as an inaugural director of Sussex Royal, Campbell parted ways with Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.
"Her loss will be keenly felt by the Cambridges," a Daily Mail source said at the time.
Karen Blackett
Prince Harry and Meghan chose Karen Blackett, the chairwoman of cable television company Mediacom UK, to be the first trustee of the Sussex Royal Foundation. Blackett will team up with Campbell, one of the Sussex Royal directors, in order to lay the foundation for the new charity, according to a report by The Telegraph.
According to her LinkedIn page, Blackett serves as the Country Manager for WPP, a marketing agency, in addition to being MediaCom's chairwoman.
Working for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex isn't the first time that Blackett has dipped her toes in governmental affairs. In 2018, the British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Blackett as the race equality business champion, a role that was part of a Race at Work charter aiming to guide businesses into promoting race equality at the workplace, according to Campaign.
"Embracing diversity and inclusion is not a choice, it’s a business necessity," Blackett said at the time. "As the Race at Work champion, I’m committed to helping businesses address inequality at all levels by taking practical steps such as introducing apprenticeships, offering mentorships and capturing ethnicity data to create a more inclusive and representative workforce."
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