When the room turns difficult, you need someone who's been there
Margot Bawden has spent 20 years on the projects where community trust was the hardest thing to hold. She knows what it costs when those moments go wrong.
Start a conversationGood process isn't always enough
Infrastructure projects, climate programmes, and local government reform all share the same vulnerability. A process can look sound from the outside. But without meticulous attention to what stakeholders can genuinely influence, clear explanation of how their feedback has been applied, and an understanding of human behaviour under pressure, trust evaporates quickly. Rebuilding it takes months. That costs projects time and money.
Margot Bawden has been in these rooms. She knows what they cost when they go wrong
In 2023, Margot led communications and engagement for the Cyclone Gabrielle road and rail recovery in Hawke's Bay through the Transport Rebuild East Coast Alliance. Communities were frightened, infrastructure was gone, and the political scrutiny was constant. She worked with programme leaders, governance groups, and construction teams to build trust in a recovery environment where every public statement was watched and every commitment had to hold.
Before that, she spent years at Waka Kotahi NZTA as Principal Communications and Engagement Advisor, leading public consultation for a nationally significant speed management programme. Politically contested and watched by ministers. She also led stakeholder and community engagement across capital works and network operations in Hawke's Bay for four years as Senior Advisor.
Margot holds a Master of Arts from the School of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, completed on a research fellowship. Part of that was spent at the Pew Centre in Washington DC, working alongside a professor who had advised the Clinton Administration on digital access and community equity policy. That research sat at the intersection of institutional decision-making and community need. It's the same intersection she works at now.
She's currently working with regional climate adaptation projects, local government communications and engagement strategy, and new water entities in their establishment phase — organisations standing up from scratch, with no community trust yet and immediate political scrutiny.
Margot B Communications launched in 2025, built on two decades of work in the sector.
Here's how it works
It starts with a direct conversation about your project, the environment it sits in, and where the pressure is coming from. That conversation is free and without obligation.
From there, Margot works in whatever shape the project needs. Strategy and planning, embedded project support, crisis response, or trust repair. You work with Margot directly. The same person you brief at the start is the person delivering the work.
She'll tell you whether she can help.
Start a conversation
"Margot doesn't hide behind a desk or screen. She shows up in person, picks up the. phone, and brings the humans side of the work to the front. Because of that she is easy to work with and makes the whole team better for it. Working together on Cyclone Gabrielle road and rail recovery, we earned trust we might otherwise have lost, and the communications were the stronger for it."
- Andrew Shannon, Construction Manager, Transport East Coast Alliance
What Margot does when she is not in the room
Margot is a third-degree black belt in ITF Taekwon-Do and has been an assistant instructor at RTR Taekwon-Do in Hawke's Bay since 2019. She teaches self-defence at local girls' schools and competes nationally and internationally.
Taekwon-Do and a difficult community meeting ask the same thing of a person. Can you read the room, hold your ground, and not let the pressure make the decision for you?
Keeping children and adults engaged three times a week is its own kind of pressure management. Margot goes in with a plan and pivots when the room needs something different. She's been doing that on the mat for years. It shows up in her facilitation work too.
Outside Taekwon-Do she is an active learner who brings the same curiosity to her professional development that she brings to everything else. She is currently completing facilitation training with Kerri Price and continues to develop her practice in the areas of trust, human behaviour, and stakeholder dynamics.
If you want to know how Margot thinks, start here
ALIGNMENT is Margot's newsletter for infrastructure, planning, climate adaptation, and public sector professionals. It goes out regularly and covers the practical, human side of stakeholder and community engagement. The moments that derail good projects. The language that rebuilds trust. The behaviour patterns that show up under pressure and what to do about them.
It is free, and written for people who are doing this work in real environments, not studying it from a distance.
More than 40 issues published and growing.
Have a project coming up?
Bring the context and the challenge. Margot will tell you whether she can help and what that might look like, there's no obligation.
Not ready yet? Take the free quiz and find out how you perform when stakeholder environments turn difficult.
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