CIPR Volunteer Conference, Leeds

19 - 20 May 2022

Speaker Biographies

Alastair McCapra

Alastair has been Chief Executive of the CIPR since 2013 after working for several other professional membership associations.  Among his CIPR highlights are introducing corporate affiliate membership, a new chartership assessment process, and taking the organisation virtual in 2020.  Nearly tripling the number of members who complete CPD each year is the achievement he rates as his most important.  When not working for the CIPR he edits Wikipedia, sings in a local choir and spends time with a young French bulldog.  

Professor Anne Gregory, PhD Hon FCIPR

Dr Anne Gregory, is Professor Emeritus of Corporate Communication, a current Board member of the CIPR and a past President. She currently is a volunteer on the #AIinPR Panel and with CIPR International. She is a passionate internationalist and last year was given the Atlas Award for her international work from the Public Relations Society of America and the Canadian Public Relations Society Outstanding Achievement Award for her work on the Global Capabilities Framework.

But she isn’t just an ivory tower academic. She works for organisations such as the UK Government Cabinet Office, European Commission, World Health organisation and Echo research. She also runs her own consultancy.

Anne has always been a warrior for diversity and inclusion. When she was President she introduced the CIPRs first Diversity Policy and since then has actively championed what she regards as a key element of social justice – that people are valued for all the richness and variety they bring, not for their background.

 

Anthony Bullick Chart.PR, MCIPR

Anthony Bullick is MD at award-winning agency Outwrite PR, where he completed a management buyout in 2018. He has been on the CIPR North West committee for eight years, serving as chair for the last four.

 

Asif Choudry

Asif Choudry is Sales & Marketing Director with resource, an award winning creative marketing and print provider. He is a CIM Fellow and Chartered Marketer.  He is the founder of #CommsHero @CommsHero the award winning conference that is a community celebrating the heroics comms people perform every day. Although a big fan of social media, he’s not afraid to use tried and tested comms channels like meeting IRL (In Real Life), speaking on the phone and handwriting a letter or three.

 

Ben Verinder Found.Chart.PR, FCIPR

Ben is managing director of Chalkstream, an agency specialising in reputation research and management, public relations consultancy and training – primarily to the education sector.

He is a CIPR Founding Chartered Practitioner, lead chartered status assessor, a judge on several education awards and a regular speaker on communication, reputation and research. He delivers leadership, reputation, public relations and communication training to a wide range of public and private sector clients in the UK and internationally.

A former in-house Communications Director, Ben advises senior teams and boards on strategic planning issues, informed by research insight. He is a guest lecturer on crisis communications for three UK universities. He manages the Chalkstream team that has delivered the State of PR study series since 2018.

Ben is also a contributor to a range of public relations books, a published poet and biographer of adventurer and writer Mary Burkett. His specialist interests are behavioural science in public relations practice and, more broadly, change management in education.

 

Cornelius Alexander Found.Chart.PR, FCIPR

Cornelius has been working in public sector PR for more than 30 years. He has been an industry volunteer first with the Canadian Public Relations Society and for the last twelve years with the CIPR where he is currently on the Board.

 

Dan Holden Chart.PR, MCIPR

Dan Holden is a Communication Consultant with All Things IC and has focused his communication career on internal communication. He’s worked in a variety of sectors including aviation, defence, charity and more recently, manufacturing, all of which have seen him support remote based colleagues.

His dedication to internal communication extends beyond the workplace. He’s the 2022 Chair of the CIPR sub-group, Inside and also volunteers for the Royal Air Force Air Cadets as their Internal Communication Specialist. Back in 2019, Dan also launched Horizon Comms, a resource focused on supporting those new to the Internal Communication profession.

Outside of the comms community, Dan enjoys the outdoors and focusing on his wellbeing and became a Fresh Air Friday facilitator in 2022.

 

Debbie West

Debbie West is a Senior Account Director at BCW Global specialising in transformation and employee communication. During her 20 years’ experience, Debbie has worked alongside senior leaders of a range of organisations, supporting them with the development of their communications and engagement approaches and crafting communication strategies for large-scale change programmes.

Debbie is a keen podcaster and podcast producer, supporting the publication of a number of podcast series, including the award-winning Calm Edged Rebels and Rachel Miller's Candid Comms podcast.

Debbie is a Chartered PR Practitioner; Vice Chair of the CIPR Podcast Editorial Board and former officer of the CIPR Inside committee.

 

Fiona Hathorn

Fiona is the CEO of Women on Boards UK alongside advising a number of different boards and organisations. Currently, she is an Advisory Panel Member for the FRC (Financial Reporting Council), an Advisory Board Member to Spktral (a technology company that helps organisations simplify the gender pay gap reporting process), advisor to Peel Hunt (mid-cap stockbroker) and Chair of Hanx's Nominations Committee (FMCG start-up).

She is an expert in the areas of Governance, Regulation and Talent Management who has sat on both marketing and audit & finance committees. Fiona was formerly a director for Hill Samuel Asset Management. She has advised the board of the Thai Euro Fund and is a Judge for the Non Executive Director Awards, sponsored by The Sunday Times.

 

Jackie Le Fevre

Originally trained as a zoologist Jackie Le Fevre now specialises in working with values and is in the final year of her doctorate researching values and wellbeing. In 2016 working with Parrs Wood High School Jackie developed a new approach to surfacing core values using storytelling and a narrative analysis tool called ValScan. More than 20 different organisations including national non-profits, a large hospital, several local Mind charities and a variety of other firms including legal, logistics and social care have used the process which we at the CIPR are now doing also.

Jackie spent a number of years as Head of PR for the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust so is no stranger to the world of communications and even served as a committee member for a year on her local CIPR branch and was responsible for persuading the late Sir John Harvey Jones to speak at a members event.

Jackie lives in North Wales, is the lead practitioner in the UK with the Minessence Values Framework, is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, has previously been a winner at the CIPR NW awards back in the days when they were called CREAM rather than PRide.

 

Jenni Field Chart.PR, FCIPR

Founder and director of Redefining Communications, Jenni Field has almost 20 years’ experience in communications, specialising in helping organisations go from chaos to calm. She works with organisations to help them understand how to get teams to work together better and review how operations can work more efficiently.

Everything Jenni does starts with insight and having set up communication functions in the pharmaceutical, hospitality and advertising industries, she is an expert in ensuring alignment between the communication and business strategy.

As well as being a fellow and chartered practitioner, Jenni served as CIPR President in 2020. Qualified in internal communications, she is a regular speaker on a range of topics linked to communication in the workplace.

 

Jo March MCIPR

Jo March has been a CIPR member since 2014 and she joined the CIPR East Anglia committee late last year. She has worked in PR and communications for over 20 years in a broad career spanning continents and sectors including broadcast media, logistics and social housing. Jo is an accomplished events organiser and has run academic symposiums, large events for pre-schoolers and more recently, online webinars for the CIPR such as last week’s successful CIPR East Anglia Conference on Behavioural Science.

She has extensive experience working in diverse communities and with adults living in supported housing and is an advocate for ensuring accessibility is placed at the heart of all communications activities. Jo works as a freelance consultant dedicated to upskilling and supporting in-house teams.

 

Katie Marlow Chart.PR, FCIPR

Katie is Director of Little Bird Communication and is fascinated by the world of work, the complexity of relationships, the way we work as teams and how we connect to our work, colleagues and employers. She focuses on helping leaders listen and understand their teams, and ultimately to help workplaces to work better. She uses her process of discover, design and delivery to create solutions specific to clients to resolve the communication challenges in support of change, culture and engagement in organisations.

Katie has over 20 years’ experience working in communications and celebrates 12 years working independently this year. As an active committee member and mentor, Katie has been working alongside CIPR and volunteers since 2012. In 2017 she achieved Chartered status, and in 2020 became a Fellow of CIPR. She has also been the course leader and tutor for the CIPR Internal Communications Diploma taught at Bournemouth University from 2016 – 2019.

 

Rachel Roberts Chart.PR, MCIPR

Rachel has been a member of the CIPR since 2007 and has actively volunteered since 2012.  She was elected as CIPR President 2022 which included serving as President-Elect in 2021, together with prior roles as member of the CIPR Board and CIPR Midlands committee including terms as Chair and Vice-Chair. 

Rachel is a CIPR Chartered Practitioner, working as a communications consultant for over 20 years operating in-house for BT and Cancer Research UK, and within the consultancy sector. Rachel founded spottydog communications in 2010 as an independent consultancy and has organically grown the business to create the award winning 20-strong consultancy team of today with an ethos of delivering best of breed consultancy delivered by pedigree people.  Across her career Rachel has worked with a variety of clients including the ETI, Bristan, Mitchells & Butlers plc, Motorola, McDonald’s, Bullring, Debenhams, Heinz, Eurosport, COI, Department for Culture, Media & Sport, Department of Health, the NHS and P&G brands. 

Outside of CIPR commitments Rachel also volunteers as a committee member of her local church and hockey club.  Whilst committed to her professional career, Rachel is a firm believer in working to live and loves nothing more than hitting the road in her motorhome with her partner Tracy, two nearly teenager boys and Zac the (non spotty) dog. 

 

Rebecca Zeitlin Chart.PR, MCIPR

Rebecca is the Marketing Director at climate tech company Levidian. Her remit spans the full mix of marketing and communications, including brand, public affairs, digital, and media. In addition to experience working at the cutting edge of green aerospace, Rebecca has also developed brands in diverse sectors such as healthcare and sport engineering. Her areas of expertise are reputation, ESG, and scaling innovative businesses. She is a Chartered PR practitioner.

Rebecca has an MBA and MS in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. She is on the board of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, is a non-portfolio committee member of Stempra, and is a member of the PRCA's Misinformation in Climate Communications Working Group.

 

Sara Hawthorn Chart.PR, MCIPR

Sara Hawthorn Chart.PR is a disabled PR practitioner and trainer who ran her own agency for several years. She has been a visiting lecturer in digital marketing at Leeds Trinity University and was cited as one of the Shaw Trust’s top 100 influential people with a disability in 2018.

She has spoken on disability inclusion, accessibility and diversity issues at multiple industry events and runs regular training sessions and workshops for agencies and PR events to help them overcome issues around ableism employing and retaining disabled talent. She is also the Chair of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire CIPR Committee.

 

Sarah Brown-Fraser

Sarah Brown-Fraser is the Marketing and Communications Manager at Activity Alliance and has worked in marketing, primarily in sport and third sector, for more than 20 years. She leads the marketing communication team for Activity Alliance, where she oversees all offline and online activities.

The national charity Activity Alliance enables organisations to support disabled people to be active. Sarah’s role includes helping others to maximise their own marketing and communication potential, to reach more disabled people. With a wide understanding of barriers that many disabled people face, she is passionate about changing the marketing landscape for the better.

One of few disabled people in sports marketing, Sarah is devoted to increasing opportunities and strengthening our sector’s diversity for under-represented groups. Activity Alliance supports the sport and leisure sector with a range of resources, such as an inclusive communication guide and fact sheets. www.activityalliance.org.uk/communications

 

Sarah Williams MCIPR, MCIM, MPRCA, FHEA

Sarah Williams is the Interim Director of the Business School at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK.  She moved into academia following 15 years working in the UK PR industry for big name agencies such as McCann-Erickson in Birmingham and Spreckley Partners in London, as well as smaller, regional agency teams, including Connect PR (now ITG Connect) and Gough Bailey Wright.  Having managed her own busy PR department, she has a wealth of practical experience in PR strategy and management.  

Sarah is a member, and regional co-chair, of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Public Relations Consultancy Association, and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, where she is also a senior examiner for the Postgraduate Professional Diploma in Marketing, responsible for examining the unit in Corporate Digital Communications. She is also a Director on the Black Country Chamber of Commerce board. 

Sarah holds a Masters in Science with Distinction in Public Relations from the University of Stirling and her current research interests include PR and professionalism, and the lived experience of PR practitioners. She has published a chapter in ‘Experiencing Public Relations’ by Bridgen and Vercic, on the role of personality in PR practice, and her new book, ‘Women’s Work in PR’ with Elizabeth Bridgen is due to be published in 2023.

 

Steve Shepperson-Smith Chart.PR, FCIPR

Steve is the Vice President of the CIPR and will be the 75th President in 2023. He is Vodafone Group Plc's corporate communication lead for Africa and both created and now manages the company's reputation measurement and management programme across 20 global markets. In a PR career spanning over two decades, Steve has worked at a senior level in house and in agency and with international markets across five continents.

Steve has been a member of CIPR for 24 years. He was a founder member of the Channel Islands Group and then went on to Chair the Greater London Group. As a member of the CIPR's Council and then Board he has also sat on the Professional Practices Committee, helped draft the 2020-2024 strategy and Chaired the Finance Committee.