Experience

FirstWord Media

• United Kingdom
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Director

  • Apr 2014 - Present

  Content marketing is one of the biggest corporate trends and it demands that companies make a dramatic and professional shift into publishing. To make that work for them, companies need proper journalism and best-practice story gathering expertise. Sometimes businesses and organisations need quality content at volume and high frequency. Sometimes they need strategy and a newsroom mentality to help them to become the sponsors and supporters of a debate around their industry. We are drawn from places that know how to do all that superbly: the Financial Times, Ogilvy, The Daily Telegraph and elsewhere. Companies then need to distribute their stories, to know where audiences reside in the digital age and how they talk to each other. FirstWord knows all about that too. In short, we translate marketing goals into suites of top quality editorial and deliver targeted readers and customers to the content on companies' own platforms. We are working with some of the biggest global groups on long-running activities that associate their names with the topics in which they are expert. We are also working with clients on shorter, more-focused bursts of activity around specific campaigns or launches. We help them with editorial calendars and the rigour required to hit a company's marketing topics with the right frequency. We are having a lot of fun: we really enjoy learning about our clients' businesses and gathering and telling the stories that their audiences want to hear. That's why we got into journalism in the first place.



The Telegraph

• United Kingdom
• Media Production
• 700 & Above Employee

• Editorial Director, Commercial

  • Apr 2011 - Mar 2014

  Head of Commercial Editorial team with strong market-leading position in fast-growing field of content marketing and tie-ups with media organisations. My main job roles: 1. Inject more editorial thinking and sensibility into pitching for and executing complex campaign business won from clients and advertising agencies; 2. Manage links between commercial and editorial departments of the group while safeguarding editorial integrity; 3. Maintain and build on first-class production of campaigns through management of self-contained editorial unit (30-40 people) on commercial side of the Telegraph.

• Group Foreign Editor

  • Jul 2008 - Apr 2011

  Manage output, identity and location of network of correspondents around the globe in a 24/7 multi-platform newsroom.



Financial Times

• United Kingdom
• Newspaper Publishing
• 700 & Above Employee

• Milan Correspondent

  • Sep 2004 - Jul 2008

• New York Correspondent

  • Sep 1999 - Sep 2004



Financial Times

• United Kingdom
• Newspaper Publishing
• 700 & Above Employee

• Various editing roles

  • 1993 - 1999