Sadie Groom - Managing Director - Bubble Agency
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.
Lesley Johnson - BBC Worldwide Consumer Products
Lesley is the Home Entertainment Director and Operations Director at BBC Worldwide. She oversees the content workflows to both physical and digital supply chains and manages the sourcing, manufacture and distribution of merchandise product. 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 where she looked after This Morning and was on the launch team of Loose Women.
Anna Lockwood – Telstra
David Dowling
David Dowling is the Vice President of Sales for EMEA and APAC. David joined Ross Video in 2011 as Director of Sales Europe, then EMEA shortly afterwards. In his current capacity David manages the Ross sales team, oversees all business development and sales and marketing strategies for the EMEA & APAC Team. David has twenty years' experience in the broadcast industry with extensive channel and manufacturer experience, working in various roles including Sales Directorships, Channel Management and Business Development. He studied Business Management at New Bucks University.
Stephanie Genin
Stephanie Genin is currently the Vice President of global field marketing for Avid Technology. Stephanie worked at Technicolor and Grass Valley before Avid and prior to joining the media industry held various marketing positions in the ICT world at Xerox, BT and Siemens. Stephanie likes trying new experiences and her motto always been "Carpe Diem”, while making sure you still don't give up on planning and mitigate risks. This comes very apparent in her life - both professionally (having cut her teeth in corporations and start up) and personally (having lived in Japan, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Russia). Stephanie adopted London as her home over a decade ago (although hard to tell with her typical French accent).
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.
Samantha Arlow
Samantha is a Director of Adamantean Ltd specialising in putting together bespoke funding solutions to help businesses grow and diversify. Sam has almost 20 years’ experience in the broadcast and media industries, in both equipment sales and finance roles. Before founding Adamantean, Samantha spent 10 years at a leading equipment reseller before being recruited to Fineline Media Finance for a similar length of time, where she was the leading sales performer and latterly promoted to Divisional Director – AV, charged with setting up a new sales division. Both roles have provided her with a good understanding of the ever-evolving broadcast production. In addition to her lengthy network in the broadcast industry, Sam has developed a particular niche speciality, with an enviable list of contacts and relationships, in the pro AV sector too. An alumnus of the Women in Film and Television (WFTV) mentoring scheme, Sam is a great supporter of gender equality in the media industries and feels strongly that non-craft roles in the sector are under recognised.
Molly Connolly - Dell
Molly Connolly joined Dell in May, 2015 as the WW Strategist for Media & Entertainment for Precision workstations. In this role, she is responsible for developing the global strategy and business development around a complete solution portfolio based on professional software applications and ISV partners. As a subject matter expert with over 20 years in the industry, Molly provides domain expertise and support to all of Dell’s internal and external constituencies – identifying and managing alignment around key joint technology opportunities. Prior to joining Dell, Molly was the WW Sr. Business Development Manager for the global Media & Entertainment market for AMD’s FirePro professional graphics. She has also held many strategic roles at HP in business development and marketing focusing on Media & Entertainment/DCC, virtualization, cloud solutions and strategic alliances. During her tenure managing the M&E market for HP’s global Workstation business unit, they were able achieve #1 market share in this vertical segment. Molly holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration degree, both from Southern New Hampshire University, and lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband, Smoochie a large mutt and a rescue cat named Purr. Outside of work, her passions are scuba diving, gardening and cooking.
Nicki Fisher - Clear-Com
Nicki Fisher is the EMEA Sales Director for Clear-Com, an HME Company. In this role, she is responsible for sales and pre-sales teams, selling and supporting Clear-Com and Trilogy Communications 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, Post Production and Telecoms 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.
Anne-Louise Buick - AVID
Anne-Louise Buick is Vice President, Global Field and Channel Marketing at Avid, responsible for successfully leading Avid’s global field marketing organization, key strategic partner sales and marketing plans to drive revenue as well as worldwide channel engagement. Prior to joining Avid, Anne-Louise was Head of Media Marketing and Communications at Ericsson, overseeing all marcomms activities for their Media Solutions business. Having worked within the broadcast technology space for over 17 years, Anne-Louise has held senior marketing positions; at IP video technology manufacturer Exterity, where she was responsible for its entire global marketing and communications strategy; a specialist Pay TV subscriber management company and consulted on marketing niche digital archive monetization projects.
Jessica Hawkes
With a keen interest in the representation of women across the industries, Jessica started a career in PR after studying a Linguistics degree focusing on the application of language and gender. She joins Females in the Broadcast Industry panel whilst working at Bubble & Squeak, bringing experience and passion through her work with linguistics alongside the technical elements of the Broadcast industry.
Kerry Freeman - Imagen
Kerry has worked in the media industry for a decade, starting at a Post Production house in London's Soho, taking a brief whistle-stop tour of three continents, returning to London as EMEA Account Manager at a transformative startup. Kerry has held a variety of customer development roles, and now works with clients in the Sports and Media sector, in the Commercial team at Imagen. With a particular interest in digital transformation, Kerry works closely with businesses to improve workflows, embrace technology evolution and ensure scalability and longevity of high-value content. Kerry is passionate to help others and cares about equal representation of peers in media and technology.
Gay Bell – Platform
With over 25 years international business experience, all of which have been spent in the hi-tech and digital media markets, Gay is a well-respected corporate communications and PR consultant. Gay is highly experienced at helping companies – from start-ups to multi-nationals – to message and communicate technology and corporate leadership, mergers and acquisitions, and market diversity to a wide range of external and internal stakeholders. Prior to establishing Platform, Gay was on the European board and head of technology at Fleishman Hillard, the world’s largest PR consultancy. Her senior consultancy experience, working for clients such as Bell Atlantic, BT, EDS, Ericsson, Grass Valley, NDS, NeXt Computer and TANDBERG Television is supported by international in-house PR positions for Philips Electronics, based in The Netherlands. Gay began her career as a journalist.
Lynne-Mei Lee – Ericsson
Lynne-Mei leads external communications for Ericsson’s TV and media businesses worldwide. She has over 15 years’ experience working in TV, media and entertainment and has held senior PR roles at Viacom, which is home to some the world's most known and loved entertainment brands including MTV and Nickelodeon, and leading international content producer and distributor, FremantleMedia. Prior to this she worked in the pan-European press office of the kids’ TV network, Fox Kids. Lynne is a keen traveller with a self-imposed goal to visit at least one new country each year. She is also an advocate of yoga and pilates, box sets, good food and great wine and coffee, depending on the time of day.
Stacie Desplanques – Anevia
Lesley Marr - Molinare
Lesley is Director of Operations at Molinare; Molinare is now the largest, privately owned post facility in the UK, offering complete creative services in all genres of feature film and television. Recent work has included numerous 4K/UHD productions, including High Dynamic Range and Dolby Vision projects for both home entertainment and theatrical release. Prior to joining Molinare Lesley was COO for Deluxe Media Europe, overseeing the day to day operation delivering to UK Broadcasters and global platforms. During her career Lesley has managed transformation programmes, senior client relationships, operational excellence projects developing media logistics, scheduling and MAM tools and managed teams across multi-site UK operations. Lesley has held several senior management positions in Broadcast Operations at Sky & Technicolor. Her career path, however, started in the creative post production world working as an editor before learning the skills of a VFX artist where she worked for leading global facilities before moving into the world of Operations Management. In addition to her day job Lesley has, for several years, sat on the board of the UK Screen Association and is also a member of the IBC conference committee business stream, chairing and producing conference sessions.
Carrie Wootten – Immersive UK – Knowledge Transfer Network
Carrie leads on Immerse UK, which is a cross-sector network for immersive technologies, as well as supporting businesses in the creative and digital sectors. She has worked extensively across the digital media, film, design and arts landscape, developing and delivering new business strategies in order to generate income, as well as attracting high profile partnerships for educational institutions such as LSBU and Ravensbourne, where she spent 7 years within a senior management role. Her clients have ranged from Mozilla and the BFI through to Barclays, Ogilvy and the Cannes Film Festival. She has produced several high-profile industry related events, led on multiple European programmes for SMEs, as well as managed CPD training initiatives and specific client led projects.
