Nicole Bearne

Why organisations work with Nicole Bearne

• A continuous twenty-five-year vantage point inside one Formula One team, from founding member of British American Racing in 1998 to Head of Internal Communications at Mercedes-AMG Petronas through its run of consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Few practitioners in this field have anywhere near that depth of single-environment experience.
• Reported directly to Team Principal Ross Brawn between 2007 and 2013, including the 2009 Brawn GP season that delivered both world titles in the team’s first and only year of existence and is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story.
• Built and led the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch within a 1,300-person engineering organisation operating across multiple UK sites and racing every fortnight.
• MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London, and a CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Few practitioners with comparable F1 operational experience hold formal qualifications in organisational psychology.
• Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, adding a board-level governance perspective to the operational track record.

Biography highlights

• Head of Internal Communications, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, for approximately a decade through a sustained period of world championship success.
• Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn (2007 to 2013), covering Honda Racing F1, the 2009 Brawn GP championship year, and the Mercedes acquisition.
• Founding member of British American Racing Formula One Team in 1998.
• Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee.
• MSc in Organisational Behaviour, Birkbeck, University of London; CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications; Member of CIPR (MCIPR); Accredited PR Practitioner.
• Founder and Director of The Comms Exchange Ltd; featured in the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story.

Biography

Inside Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, internal communications is treated as a performance variable. The function exists to make sure that 1,300 people across multiple sites act on the same strategy at the same time, every race weekend.

That is the environment Nicole Bearne worked inside for 25 years. She was a founding member of British American Racing in 1998 and stayed through the team’s transitions to Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Between 2007 and 2013 she was Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn. That tenure included the 2009 season when Brawn GP took both world titles in its first and only year of existence.

She then built the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch and led it for the next decade. She operated at board level through a period in which the team won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Her academic grounding sits alongside that operational experience: an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck and the CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications.

Today she runs The Comms Exchange, advising organisations on internal communications and engagement in complex environments. She also serves as Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and chairs its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. The Brawn GP season she lived through is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story.

Key speaking topics

• Internal communications in high-performance organisations
• Employee engagement and employee experience
• Leadership communication at scale
• Culture inside elite sport
• Diversity, equity and inclusion governance
• Lessons from Formula One for complex organisations

Ideal for

• Internal communications, corporate affairs and employee experience leaders
• Chief People Officers, HR directors and heads of culture
• Senior leadership teams in large or multi-site organisations operating under sustained competitive pressure
• Boards and committees responsible for inclusion, engagement and organisational culture

Audience outcomes

• A view of internal communications as an operating discipline, drawn from a decade running the function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
• How a 1,300-person F1 team translates strategy into execution under non-negotiable race deadlines.
• What four ownership transitions of one F1 team reveal about leading communications through structural change.
• The link between employee experience and on-track performance, with named examples from Brawn GP and Mercedes’ championship years.