About Us
Fourteen years ago I was running a PR & copywriting firm. Businesses called me when their web designer had run out of patience and they still had nothing to say.
I'd sit down with a founder and ask them why they'd started. What they loved. What others had seen in them that they'd forgotten to see in themselves.
And I'd watch something shift.
They hadn't called me for that. They called me for words. But what they needed — what they always need — was to remember who they were before the business got heavy.
I've been doing that work ever since. The tools have changed. The contexts have changed. The name for what I do has changed. But helping founders find their way back to their own judgment — that has never changed.
Right now it feels more urgent than ever.
The world is dramatically uncertain and most leaders are responding by contracting — waiting for clarity before they act, tightening their grip on what they know, retreating into the story that it can't be any other way. I understand that impulse. I've felt it myself.
But contraction is a choice. And so is the alternative.
Fitzhugh & Associates exists for the founders and leaders who can feel the ground shifting — and know that who they've been up until now isn't enough for what comes next.
Advisory work grounded in humanity
I'm Josie Fitzhugh. Most people come to me with something specific — a project, a problem, a decision that's been circling too long. We start there. The embedded relationships tend to follow. Once you've had a genuinely independent thinking partner in your corner, it's hard to imagine working without one.
My clients know I walk alongside them, for as long as they need it. I'm a relentless cheerleader and a rigorous thinker — someone who holds them to their commitments when the energy dips, the distractions multiply, or it gets tempting to ease up.
For me, the purpose is bigger than any one client. Every business that finds its footing, leads well and adapts well makes New Zealand stronger — across the public sector, the private sector, and everything in between. That's what keeps me in it.
If you're ready to work on what actually matters — I'd love to talk.
"Contraction is a choice. And so is the alternative."
Three decades, one thread
My background spans three decades across public policy, communications and executive coaching — in New Zealand and the UK.
Three distinct phases of a career, each working a different dimension of the same problem.
Policy taught me systems and structures — the outer architecture of how organisations and economies function. There is no such thing as an easy fix, and the gap between public and private sector thinking costs everyone dearly.
Communications taught me narrative and culture — how people and institutions make meaning together. I learned to hunt for the best version of a story, a business, a leader — what made them genuinely distinctive, and who needed to hear it.
Coaching taught me the interior — identity, belief, the stories leaders tell themselves that shape everything else. I worked with leaders in their brightest and toughest professional moments, helping them distinguish between what was real and what their minds had decided was fixed.
Fitzhugh & Associates works across all of it. Because the problems that matter rarely live in just one dimension.
Qualifications and frameworks
Genratec® Accredited Associate | BA (Hons) International Relations
Experience: 30 years across UK and New Zealand
Leadership coaching for business owners and executives: incorporating change methodologies and vertical development. Underpinning models include: Integral Theory (Ken Wilber), psychological defence mechanisms, StAGES (O’Fallon / Barta) and Ego Development Theory (Cook-Greuter)
Corporate communications: corporate positioning, stakeholder engagement, crisis management, media and government relations
Policy adviser: representing business views on transport, regional and environmental affairs in the early years of Tony Blair's UK government
For more details, visit her LinkedIn profile.