About

Our goal is to achieve a diverse and gender balanced workforce across the broadcast media and entertainment technology sector, specifically within the areas of engineering, technical operations, sales, marketing and business.

We open up opportunities for women by:

  • Delivering our award-winning annual mentoring programme in the UK, Europe, North America and across the APAC and ANZ regions;
  • Celebrating the skills and achievements of brilliant women across the industry through our annual Rise Awards;
  • Providing free membership (to all genders) with access to regular networking events, seminars, workshops and conferences;
  • Inspiring, educating, informing the next generation of talent through our Rise Up Academy programme.

Those who benefit from joining Rise will be working in non-craft roles for broadcast manufacturers, service providers and broadcasters.


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The Team

Sadie Groom - Rise Founder

Sadie founded Bubble Agency a PR, marketing and events company focusing on the entertainment technology, sports and AV business, in 1999 and is still very much the driving force. Using her 20 years of PR and Marketing experience she not only looks after the business side of things and client strategy but also promotes the role of women in the industries she works in through her work with Rise, Women in Film & TV and SVG Women’s Initiative. A keen traveller, she is trying to go to 50 countries before she is 50 and would like to spend more time on the golf course.

Nicki Fisher - Rise Chair

As an active leader and STEM Ambassador, Nicki Fisher was formerly, prior to her retirement, EMEA Sales Director for Clear-Com. She was responsible for sales and pre-sales teams, selling and supporting Clear-Com products and solutions across the entire EMEA region. Prior to joining Clear-Com in April 2014, Nicki was the Sales Director for the Tektronix EMEA Video Business for 8 years, where she was responsible for sales of Video Analysis and Monitoring equipment into the Broadcasting, Postproduction and Telco markets. Nicki spent 11 years working for Agilent (formerly Hewlett Packard) in a variety of senior management and individual contributor sales roles, where she was the first Female Account manager for the UK Aerospace and Defence business and also European Regional Sales Manager for the Communications Test Business. Nicki gained a B.Sc. Hons in Physics from Liverpool University in 1989 and began her career as a Product Training Engineer at Marconi Instruments.

Donna Smith - Managing Director

Donna is a seasoned C-Level Executive specialising in Sales, Marketing, and New Business Development. With over two decades of success in blue-chip and multi-billion-dollar companies, she is known for her entrepreneurial spirit and ability to lead teams to achieve strategic goals and drive geographical and business performance growth. With a proven track record in board-level decision-making and multi-million-dollar M&A experience, Donna’s hunger for knowledge and passion for innovation fuels her endless source of ideas. She possesses diverse skills in sales, crisis management, start-ups, growth strategy, technology, leadership, fundraising, company culture, and communication. Notably, as the CEO of CinemaNow.com, she transformed the international OTT media storefront into a profitable venture through strategic reorganisation. Donna’s pragmatism, creativity, and resourcefulness have consistently propelled businesses from concept to success.

Carla Maroussas – Mentoring Manager

With over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry Carla has transitioned into a successful Life Coach and NLP Practitioner. Through her Coaching Consultancy, she helps clients on a one-on-one basis, assisting them in rediscovering their values and core beliefs to determine their next best steps. Specialising in career and personal development, work-life balance, and self-care, Carla has worked with diverse clients, including business owners, board members, and working parents. She also offers customised coaching programs for companies, focusing on company values, staff productivity, talent identification, and new leader development. Carla provides both online and in-person coaching services for individuals, teams, and groups.

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Nicki Fisher - Rise Chair

As an active leader and STEM Ambassador, Nicki Fisher was formerly, prior to her retirement, EMEA Sales Director for Clear-Com. She was responsible for sales and pre-sales teams, selling and supporting Clear-Com products and solutions across the entire EMEA region. Prior to joining Clear-Com in April 2014, Nicki was the Sales Director for the Tektronix EMEA Video Business for 8 years, where she was responsible for sales of Video Analysis and Monitoring equipment into the Broadcasting, Postproduction and Telco markets. Nicki spent 11 years working for Agilent (formerly Hewlett Packard) in a variety of senior management and individual contributor sales roles, where she was the first Female Account manager for the UK Aerospace and Defence business and also European Regional Sales Manager for the Communications Test Business. Nicki gained a B.Sc. Hons in Physics from Liverpool University in 1989 and began her career as a Product Training Engineer at Marconi Instruments.

Sadie Groom - Bubble Agency and Rise Founder

Sadie founded Bubble Agency a PR, marketing and events company focusing on the entertainment technology, sports and AV business, in 1999 and is still very much the driving force. Using her 20 years of PR and Marketing experience she not only looks after the business side of things and client strategy but also promotes the role of women in the industries she works in through her work with Rise, Women in Film & TV and SVG Women’s Initiative. A keen traveller, she is trying to go to 50 countries before she is 50 and would like to spend more time on the golf course.

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Andy Beale - BT Sport

Andy is Chief Engineer for BT Sport, joining the innovative and disruptive British broadcaster at the beginning of its journey in 2012 to oversee the technology and construction of the landmark BT Sport Production Hub in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. He played a pivotal role in the development and launch of Europe’s first commercial live sports Ultra HD channel BT Sport Ultra HD, and its HDR successor: BT Sport Ultimate. He led BT Sport’s pioneering Dolby Atmos launch and ground breaking advances in live VR 360. Recently he has delivered world firsts in 8K and 5G remote production. Previously he was Head of Engineering for Sports Media House, Octagon, and before that delivered projects worldwide for respected system integrator IPK.

Anne-Louise Buick - Telestream

Anne-Louise is the Senior Vice President, Marketing for Telestream, leading the Telestream global marketing organization responsible for all the marketing elements of Telestream’s GTM activities. Previously Anne-Louise was Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing at Avid, overseeing Field, Channel and Demand Marketing, leading marketing campaigns to drive revenue as well as worldwide channel marketing engagement. Prior to joining Avid, Anne-Louise was Head of Media Marketing and Communications at Ericsson, establishing a go-to-market framework to ensure the successful launch of new products, services and solutions, designing marketing programs to support business objectives and ensuring consistent and effective communication of customer value for the Media Solutions business.

Charlotte Wheeler - MBI

Charlotte Wheeler is the Event Director at MBI, the publishers of Broadcast, Screen International and shots. Charlotte started her career on what was originally The Production Show, and is now BVE, in March 2004, looking after key manufacturers and brands within the broadcast technology markets. Charlotte was part of the merger between the show and Video Forum in 2008 and was responsible for the subsequent launches of The Production Show back into BVE at Earls Court in 2009 and BVE North which launched in 2011 in Manchester. Since leaving BVE in February 2012 for maternity leave, she launched a series of 8 conferences for the MBI brands including Production & Post Forum, Screen Film Summit, Commissioning & Funding Forum and Creative Week. She is now working on the new event for the media creative industries, The Media Production Show taking place in June 2016. Charlotte has also been an active advocate of the WFTV and a member since 2009 and has run a number of events celebrating women in the media industries, including a special event to celebrate International Women's Day with Broadcast and Screen International.

Kate Wendelboe - BT

A strategist and accredited executive coach, Kate is Co-Director of Strategy and Growth for BT Security and founder of Recalibration Coaching. She previously ran the strategy and proposition development of a portfolio of BT’s smaller businesses and has also been a Director of BT's Media & Broadcast business. Before joining BT, Kate was in marketing and then journalism at Reuters - she was one of the team that started Reuters Insider, Reuters’ OTT platform for financial professionals. Kate also has an MBA from Cambridge’s Judge Business School where she specialised in Culture, Arts and Media Management. Kate is married with two sons and, after living in the States, Hong Kong and Switzerland, is now based in London.

Jackie Howes - Discovery

Recently winning the 2020 IABM Award for Technology Leader of the year, Jackie is recognised as a person who is at the forefront of disruption and innovation within the broadcast and media industry. Through inspired leadership she has helped to deliver ground-breaking technology and business benefits. Jackie has over 20 years of experience working in the broadcast industry and has worked for a number of different companies, always working in a role that bridges the gap between traditional IT and broadcast engineers. Today, as the Director of Media Infrastructure Architecture at Discovery, Jackie is directly responsible for scoping, defining and coordinating both large and small Infrastructure systems that have a direct impact on the company’s technical capabilities and profitability. She works alongside global teams and external suppliers to architect infrastructure ecosystems that supports the technical and operational aspects of production and broadcast systems. Jackie is a strong believer in sharing knowledge and endeavors to create an environment where every individual is able to choose the path they wish to take.

Lesley Johnson - BBC Studios

Lesley is Global Director of Home Entertainment at BBC Studios, where she is responsible for the Digital and DVD business worldwide. She is Vice Chair of the British Association for Screen Entertainment and a Rise Advisory Board member. At work Lesley leads on support for women’s reproductive health, which led to the BBC signing the Workplace Menopause pledge in April 2022. In a wide ranging broadcast career Lesley has held senior editorial and operational roles across the television industry. She founded the Westminster news facility Millbank Studios, which broadcast the first live pictures from the House of Commons Committees and launched the Parliamentary Channel. In the late Nineties Lesley was Head of Production for Lifestyle at LWT and Granada TV where she looked after This Morning and was on the launch team of Loose Women. Lesley is a very keen sailor and has two grown-up daughters.

Lisa Collins - IABM

Lisa has been building powerful networks and communities for over 25 years, ensuring the groups she works with thrive and grow. After a flourishing career working for a variety of associations, membership bodies and not for profit organisations, Lisa launched her own agency, Dovetail Creative Ltd, in 2021 and now supports a variety of organisations with all aspects of community, member and customer forum engagement, events, marketing strategy, and consultancy. Lisa has worked within the broadcast, media, and entertainment space for over 12 years, working most recently with membership organisations, The Circle Society and IABM. Lisa is a frequent speaker and moderator at industry events.

Lisa Lavender - The Traffic Bureau

Lisa Lavender is a business leader with over 25 years’ experience building and running businesses in the advertising industry at a local and global level. Having worked with numerous global brands, broadcasters, agencies and production companies, she has a deep understanding of business processes and the changes impacting the marketing supply chain. Lisa is the founder of The Traffic Bureau, the UK's largest outsourced specialist supplier of TV admin (Business Affairs) services. After selling TTB to Adstream, Lisa held a number of roles within the advertising distribution company. She is the former CEO of Adstream UK where she managed operations, account management and sales teams for Adstream's largest operating market outside of the USA.

Mark Harrison - DPP

Mark began his career as an Historian at Cambridge University, before moving into the media industry. He spent many years as a Director, Producer and Executive Producer, and won numerous awards for his filmmaking, including an International Emmy and a BAFTA nomination. Mark has held senior roles within the independent production sector and the BBC. He was MD of an independent production company before being appointed BBC Head of Arts, and then Head of Multiplatform Production. He was subsequently Controller of Production for BBC North and leader of the BBC’s End-to-End Digital programme, before becoming Director of Transformation for BBC Design & Engineering. In 2015 Mark became CEO of the DPP – the media industry’s international business network, which he founded. Today the DPP has nearly 500 member companies from across the whole media supply chain – from global tech giants to start ups.

Nic Kemp - Adobe

Nic works as a Global Workflow Consultant for Adobe Inc, she leads the technical and creative work using Adobe Creative Cloud tools for their largest account, WPP. Prior to Adobe, she has worked as a Product Director for IPV, a leading media asset management system leading the Adobe integrations, at the DPP running the Next Generation Production network and 15 years as a workflow consultant for system integrators and her own company leading large-scale transformational change projects for enterprises such as BBC, Disney, Warner Media and News Corp. She hosted events for Rise in lockdown - the ‘Rise In-Conversation’ series interviewing female leaders in the media tech industry. Then she went on the run two Rise mentoring programmes in the UK and the first one in North America in 2021 - 22.

Stephen Stewart - Media Consultant

A television and radio professional with over 40 years in the industry, Stephen has enjoyed roles as varied as commercial producer, gallery director for tv programmes ranging from Formula 1 to UK Parliament. As well as TV production, Stephen is experienced in TV playout and media services having worked for the BBC, Channel 4, Thames Television and Deluxe. The lure of AI and machine learning saw Stephen move into the advertising technology space with Mirriad Advertising before becoming COO at Take 1 where he was responsible for leading and restructuring the Operations, Product and Media Technology teams and launching Access Services and Localisation/Dubbing, delivering thousands of hours of content for some of the world’s largest production companies and networks. The resulting growth in revenue led to the successful acquisition of Take 1 by Verbit.ai Stephen is now an advisor to Media organisations, a Rise Advisory Board member & mentor, an active contributor to the Rise Up Academy, as well as being Vice Chair of the Royal Television Society’s Technology Centre.

Tanya Rai - Pebble

Tanya has worked in the broadcast and entertainment industry for over 14 years with a range of experience in marketing, events, project/account management and advocating diversity. She has worked with the BBC, Cheltenham Literature and Jazz Festivals, International Broadcasting Convention, Gritty Talent, British Arrows, Wildscreen and Icon Films. She also worked for Sundog Media Toolkit, managing projects to create automated cloud native tools for the versioning of packaged media (DCP & IMF) and building relationships with leading Hollywood Studios and UK broadcasters. She currently works as Marketing and Communications Manager at Pebble, who deliver automation, playout and management solutions for the broadcast community. Tanya has hosted and produced many of the episodes featured in the ‘Rise In Conversation With’ webinar series, interviewing women in senior leadership roles from ITV, The Financial Times and the BBC. She also launched her own podcast in 2020, where she talks to diverse guests who work in the broadcast and creative industries about their top three ways of 'Keeping It Real'.

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