Carrie Wootten – Managing Director - Rise
Carrie is the Managing Director of Rise, an advocacy group for gender diversity within the broadcast technology sector. Its aims are to open up more opportunities for female broadcast professionals through its award winning mentoring programme, ‘Rise-Up’ – its new outreach education programme, regular networking events, as well as celebrating achievements through the annual Rise Awards, held at IBC. Carrie has worked extensively across the media and broadcast landscape, developing and delivering commercial business strategies, as well as attracting high profile partnerships for educational institutions such as Ravensbourne University, where she spent 7 years within a senior management role.
Sadie Groom - 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.
Nancy Diaz Curiel - Digigram Asia Pte Ltd & Rise Head of Asia
Nancy Diaz Curiel is managing director at Digigram Asia Pte Ltd. She has been working for Digigram for more than 10 years, in the audio broadcasting industry. She oversees the company's strategy and sales across the APAC region with her local team based in Singapore. Passionate about people and new technologies, she has been dedicating her efforts in increasing her company's market share in the region, while developing a trustworthy network of partners and resellers. This third culture kid loves sharing and communicating with others, and is currently involved in a mentorship programme with a reputable French university, sharing her experience, network and guidance with young graduates. She is looking forward to learning from new inspirational personalities and contributing in empowering women in her side of the world.
Joanna Abeyie MBE - Blue Moon
The go-getting 32 year-old has blazed a trail as a multi-award-winning social impact entrepreneur, champion of diversity, inclusion and equality as well as making a mark as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. Joanna has spent the last 12 years increasing the employment of diverse talent, launching her first charity Elevation Networks Charitable Trust at 18 alongside six colleagues in 2006, following this 2008 Joanna went on to launch her own Social Enterprise Shine Media in 2008, where she placed over 3,000 people from diverse backgrounds into work within the creative industries. Joanna’s latest enterprise is founding Blue Moon, a flagship inclusive Executive Search Business and Diversity and Inclusion Consultancy Practice. Before Blue Moon, Joanna founded Hyden, part of FTSE 250 Global Recruiter SThree, an executive search and consultancy business. Alongside Executive Search success, Joanna has an impressive track record in attracting, recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse talent and leading businesses through culture transformation, unique recruitment processes and challenging bias from top down and bottom up. This work, coupled with her personal story, led to her TEDx Talk on social mobility in Oman in 2018. She has been instrumental in establishing the Creative Diversity All Party Parliamentary Group with Ed Vaizey MP of which she is joint secretary. Joanna was awarded a Distinguished Graduate Award by the University of Reading in 2019, and an Honorary Doctorate in Business from the University of West England in the same year. Joanna’s responsibilities do not end there, she is a Non- Exec Director for Investors in People, a Trustee for The Lord Mayor’s Appeal and the first and only black person to be made a Trustee and Director of The Media Society. Joanna is also a Trustee and Director of Haberdasher Askes Trust Federation Board and School Governor of Hatcham College and Mulberry Academy Shoreditch. Joanna was also awarded her Freedom of the City in 2018 and became the first black and youngest women to become a Liverywoman for the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. Joanna was also awarded an MBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list for her services to diversity and inclusion in the creative and media industries.
Faz Aftab - ITV
Faz Aftab is the Director of Platform Distribution at ITV. She is responsible for the carriage and distribution of ITV’s channels and content including the ITV Hub, ITV Hub+ and the new BritBox UK service. Faz joined ITV in 2011 to spearhead the distribution of the ITV Hub and during that time the streaming service grew to 30m registered users, quadrupling in size and leading the market in live streaming at scale. She manages ITV’s distribution relationships with Virgin, Sky, Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung. Faz is ITV’s lead on Freeview Play and is a Board Director of Freesat. Before Faz joined ITV she 10 years building and launching products for start-ups in the pre-dot-com bubble before 2000. This included powering live and Video on Demand services for ABC and Fox, launching interactive data services on mobile devices for Vodafone, delivering Over The Top TV to university students and live streaming football matches to PCs. Prior to this, she had a career in software development at SAP. Faz is on the steering group of the ITV Women’s Network and is the founding member of the Women In Technology group at ITV. She is a mother to 3 young girls and is a mentor and volunteer at Stemettes, Code First Girls and Inspiring the Future.
Bea Alonso - Dalet
With over twenty years of experience working in content production and distribution environments, Bea is the Director of Product Marketing at Dalet. She is responsible for the go-to-market strategy and positioning of Dalet’s products and solutions, to ensure they meet the needs of today’s media and entertainment industry. After working with technology vendors such as Avid and Grass Valley, Bea joined Ooyala, now part of Dalet, in 2016 to spearhead the media logistics business across the Asia Pacific region. As part of her customer engagements, she has worked with over 100 media companies worldwide such as Fox Sports, HBO, PCCW, Discovery and Turner, covering workflow consulting, digital transformation, news, playout, production, post production and multi-platform content distribution. Bea is passionate about solutions that increase efficiencies through workflow orchestration, providing visibility into the media production process, and speeding up time to market. In her view, now is the perfect time to harness the tsunami of change that the media and entertainment industry is undergoing, as this presents tremendous business opportunities for technology providers, content creators and distributors alike.
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 - 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.
Happy Chhokar
Lisa Collins
Lisa Collins - IABM
Lisa Collins is Head of Membership Engagement at IABM. Her goal is to ensure an enhanced membership experience and maximum engagement for all IABM members. Having dedicated much of her career to membership organisations, Lisa understands the importance of every interaction with members and the wider eco-system. Her role at IABM is to ensure every one of our members and potential members make the most of the extensive benefits package IABM offers. She works with members' changing requirements and objectives to ensure the services IABM offer continue to be fully aligned with them.
Jo Cosgrove - Moore Kingston Smith
Jo is a Director at media accountants Moore Kingston Smith, having qualified with the firm over 20 years ago. She looks after a broad portfolio of entertainment and media clients, individuals and companies, at all stages of the business cycle from start up to sale or wind down. She oversees audit, accounting and tax compliance and gets involved in ad hoc projects where required. Jo works closely with trainees and junior managers in the firm to help them develop and achieve their potential. She is passionate that people should have equal opportunity of a career in accountancy regardless of their background and to that end is trustee of the charity Access Accountancy which promotes social mobility in the profession. Outside of work she loves spending time with her family.
Jayne de Ville - DPP
Jayne joined the BBC in 2008, working in a variety of roles across the organisation in Marketing, Technology and Television, as well as running large-scale industry conferences and events for the BBC’s College of Technology. On joining the DPP in 2011 she was instrumental in growing the DPP’s reach significantly by increasing the portfolio of events, implementing a social media strategy and improving the DPP website. Since DPP Ltd was launched in 2015 she has been working to further build and promote the DPP brand and is now responsible for defining and delivering the DPP’s marketing strategy and analysis as well as overseeing all of the DPP’s events. Jayne came to the broadcast industry following careers as a live vocalist and (briefly!) in international recruitment, both of which both took her around the globe. She is still a professional singer for www.abbaillusion.co.uk and www.eclipse-duo.co.uk, and a passionate advocate for other women in non-craft roles in the broadcast industry.
Stacie Desplanques – Anevia
David Dowling - EMEA and APAC
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.
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.
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.
Lillie Fyfe - Solent University
Lillie is currently a student at Solent University, in her second year of Film and TV Technology. She is keen to start her career in broadcast amongst the women paving the way forward and will help drive Rise's work in engaging with women at the start of their broadcast careers.
Stephanie Genin - Avid
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).
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.
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.
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.
Anna Lockwood - Telstra Broadcast Services
Anna Lockwood is an experienced media industry executive and is currently the Head of Global Sales at Telstra Broadcast Services. Anna and her team work at the convergence of the traditional broadcast industry with leading-edge telecommunications and digital platforms, and focus on bringing innovative solutions and services to the media and sports industry. In addition to her role at Telstra, Anna is a board member of the EGAA (Esports Games Association Australia), represents Telstra on the Board of Directors of IABM, and is active in industry initiatives around sports, innovation and women in technology.
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.
Alice Mills - Solent University
Alice Mills is a student of Film and Television Production Technology at Solent University. She is driven by her interest in technological advancements in the broadcast industry and is extremely keen to bring more diversity and more young faces into the scene, right alongside new, fresh and ambitious ideas. In the future, Alice hopes to travel the world as part of her career, and help bring in people from different backgrounds, and their vibrant mindsets
Tanya Rai - Sundog Media Toolkit
Tanya joined Sundog Media Toolkit over a year ago as Project Management lead and within 6 months progressed to the role of Key Account Manager. She was also one of 23 lucky women who took part in the 2019 cohort of the Rise mentoring program. Sundog is based in Bristol and they develop cutting edge software used by Hollywood studios, broadcasters, big name talent and up-and-coming film makers. Tanya's role is to manage the relationships with their key clients both in the UK and US, ensuring to add value to their experience of using the Sundog platform. She works with their specialist in-house developers to deliver client projects on time and on budget, understanding the technical scope and customer expectations of the product, as well as managing communication channels accordingly. She also works closely with the senior leadership team on business development activities and identifies opportunities of revenue growth with current and potential customers. Tanya has had various freelance roles within the broadcast tech/ media/ arts sector with a short period leading a team of event co-ordinators in the health sector. As a freelancer, she led large scale teams, providing full project management services to deliver memorable events for clients including the BBC, Cheltenham Festivals, International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) and Coventry University. Before freelancing, Tanya worked for the BBC on a full-time basis to deliver over 20 broadcast tech events per year with external partners including SMPTE, IET, WISE and WiE. Having returned to her passion for broadcast tech, Tanya is keen to champion those from ethnic minorities to take up a career in this sector.
Kate Wendelboe - BT
Kate Wendelboe is a trained executive coach and Head of Strategy for a portfolio of BT’s smaller businesses. Previously she was Director of BT Media & Broadcast after doing proposition development, business development, and strategy. Before joining BT, Kate was at Reuters working in marketing communications and then journalism. She was one of the team that started Reuters Insider, Reuters’ OTT platform for financial professionals. Kate left Reuters to study for an MBA at 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. If she had unlimited free time, she would be training for an Ironman Triathlon, learning to code, and writing a best-selling novel.
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.
