A strategic communications company with a record of excellence

Ortica Communications advises businesses and their leaders on strategies to strengthen and safeguard their brands. We help clients define their positioning, shape their narratives and communicate effectively at important moments. We have decades of experience working with the media and have advised some of the world’s most admired global organisations. With deep relationships across the US, UK and Europe, we offer significant advantages to businesses operating cross-border.

We work responsively at the very highest levels to achive extraordinary results, calibrating as one with internal teams to align on vision and goals to ensure successful outcomes.


Founder

Saira von Westenholz has more than 25 years’ experience in strategic communications, advising businesses, boards and senior leaders on a wide range of communications and reputational matters.

Before establishing her own firm, Saira was a Senior Managing Director at a leading US strategic communications agency. She has also held senior European and global communications roles at two of the world’s leading corporate law firms.

Trained as both a lawyer and a journalist, Saira brings a practical understanding of the communications challenges facing international businesses. She combines sound judgement with strong editorial skills and a creative approach, and is a trusted adviser on complex and sensitive communications issues.

Saira has previously been recognised by Lawdragon among its Global 100 Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting.

  • "Saira brings strategic insight and deep relations with the media. Her judgement is built through years of experience and importantly through carefully cultivated relationships. I had to give an interview to a global publication on financial performance every year. She had wonderful insights on what messages would resonate and be credible and which were too confusing or irrelevant. She was ruthless about spending the time to work on these messages and brutal if I went off message. The reaction to the interview internally and in the market could not have been better.”

    CEO

  • “Saira is inspirational, enthusiastic and inventive in communications. She completely evolved what was at the time, the little-known concept of league table credit, deploying the use of tables as a mainstream tool and reworking the criteria to transform how we marketed M&A dealmaking with incredible results. An exceptional writer and editor, and intuitive in her approach to communications, Saira achieves the objective regardless of convention. In short, she is refreshing and very effective.”

    Head of Mergers & Acquisitions

  • "Ours has been a project to challenge the most insightful of advisers; guiding a disparate group of independent-minded trustees. Saira and her team have brought exceptional intelligence, imagination and enthusiasm to all that they do. They have the ability to think creatively, come up with suggestions for solving the knottiest of problems and judge to perfection how to respond to third-party enquiries. No less valuable has been the breadth of their contacts. They bring to what they do a sense that the client’s project is theirs too and we are on a journey together. We cannot imagine how we managed before we engaged them."

    Chairman of Trust

  • Saira is an exceptional communications adviser who blends warmth and approachability with influence and authority. Saira anticipated, managed and above all guarded me in an unexpected moment of extreme global media scrutiny, guiding me through every step to protect me but also use the moment to get the maximum exposure in the right way. She crafted a detailed strategic plan with tactical advice on how best to amplify my story to the right audiences, with precise and impactful messaging and she gave me real time feedback to refine my media presence. Looking back on that moment, I don’t know how I would have managed without her.

    Elite Alpinist 

Get in Touch

If you are a member of the press, or if you require further information about Ortica, please contact us at info@orticacommunications.com