Rita Harding is currently Principal of her own consulting practice, specialising in providing strategic marketing, branding and customer advisory services to clients and agencies. Prior to this, she held senior marketing and communication roles at Transport for NSW (TfNSW), Tourism Northern Territory (TNT), Tourism New Zealand (TNZ), Qantas, and as a Director at an independent social marketing and behaviour change agency, Quay (Qcon).
At TfNSW she served as Executive Director Marketing, Product and Campaigns with responsibility for the establishment of the marketing, communication and campaign functions of the agency. During her time with TfNSW she led the campaign and sponsorship portfolio for all road and maritime safety and introduced award winning and life-saving programs including: “Toward Zero”, “Don’t Trust Your Tired Self”, “Plan B”, and “Saving Lives on Country Roads”. Her team also led the design and development of the integrated public transport brand and ran the G2M programs for the award-winning Opal card, Metro Train system, B-Line buses, and the CBD and South East Light Rail network.
Rita brings more than 25 years’ experience working with marketing and communication teams of various sizes across a wide range of sectors to her role as a mentor for TMA. She has extensive experience working on brand, global positioning, marketing strategy formation and delivery, advertising, public affairs, digital and social, stakeholder engagement, customer research and insights, media outreach, reputation and issues management.
She thrives on transforming the marketing and communication functions of organisations to drive better customer, commercial and reputational outcomes and experiences. She is currently applying this focus as she establishes her own marketing consultancy.
