Francis Ingham, Director General, PRCA

Francis Ingham became Director General of the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) in 2007. Founded in 1969, the PRCA is the professional body for UK PR agencies, and has recently extended its reach to include in-house communications teams and international agencies. Over the past two years, the organisation has grown by more than 50%.

Immediately prior to joining the PRCA, Ingham was Assistant Director General and Head of Public Affairs at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. His background before then was in politics and public affairs, having been a political adviser for the Conservative Party, and a lobbyist for the CBI.

He sits of the Communications Board of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and spent time as a local authority Councillor, and Vice-Chairman of an NHS trust .

Cathy Wallace Deputy features editor

Cathy joined PRWeek as deputy features editor in September 2008 and was promoted to features editor in 2009. She also completed a stint as a press officer for an NHS trust.

Her career highlights include offending Mel C of the Spice Girls; speaking at a fringe event at a major political party conference; and being told by Sir Bob Geldof her jeans were ‘chavvy’.

When not dreaming up features ideas for PR Week, Cathy spends her time riding horses, cycling and drinking wine, although rarely all at the same time .

Bill Mew - Global Sector Communications Leader, IBM Financial Services Sector

At the age of 18, Bill signed a 22-year full-career contract as a Weapons Engineering Officer in the Royal Navy. However he was forced to leave the Royal Navy on medical grounds after only four years. He then took a bi-lingual post graduate diploma in international PR before starting his PR career with Firefly Communications – a rapidly growing agency which was repeatedly voted by journalists as the best Hi-Tech agency in the UK. Bill was asked to focus on a new area called networking and was successful in bringing on board the Cisco Systems account on the hardware side, the Novell account on the software side and a large chunk of business from BT on the infrastructure side – a wish list of clients. Bill also took a brief sabbatical from Firefly to fight an election campaign as part of John Major’s campaign team.

After nearly six years at Firefly and a year in-house at British Telecom, Bill moved to IBM in 1999. In over a decade at IBM Bill has held a number of roles at UK, EMEA and global level and has been sponsored through the Executive MBA course at Henley Management Course. A few years ago Bill became the first person in IBM’s long history to be asked to lead communications for a global sector from outside the USA. For the last few years Bill has lead communications for IBM’s Financial Services Sector, IBM’s largest sector, through one of the most difficult periods that this sector has ever experienced.

Lee Bryant

Lee Bryant is an online community and social networking specialist, and co-founder of the leading social computing consultancy Headshift, which helps companies use lightweight social tools to create meaningful applications and purposeful social networks.

Headshift has a 35-strong social computing team that operates internationally, with clients across Europe, the UK, Australia and North America, which gives us an insight into the diversity that makes for healthy networks. We help put IT at the service of business, not the other way around, and apply the lessons of what works on the public internet to the real needs of businesses, both internally and externally.

Our clients include several top 10 global law firms, consultancies, FTSE-100 companies, media and governmental and public sector bodies.

Koray Öztürkler, the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Turkcell, Turkey

Koray Öztürkler, the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer in charge of corporate communications, investor relations and EU relations, has started his career in USA at Accenture Consulting where he worked as a consultant in the telecommunications sector from 1990 to 1994.

He continued his career in Yapi Kredi Bank as a Change Program Director between 1994-1998 and then joined Turkcell as the Director of International Business Development. Öztürkler has been the Division Head of Investor Relations at Turkcell since 2002.

Koray Öztürkler received his MBA degree in 1990 after graduating from Mercer University.

Christophe Ginisty, RUMEUR PUBLIQUE (RP), FRANCE

Christophe Ginisty is the founder and managing director of Paris-based RUMEUR PUBLIQUE (RP), one of the French’s leading public relations firm, which boasts the world’s most recognized technology brands as clients. He and his pan European partners have been responsible for some of the most exciting and innovative IT launches in history. His firm is recognized one of the best communications firm in France and has received numerous international awards including "PR Firm of the Year" in 2000 and 2003.

Christophe is a true entrepreneur and a responsible citizen. He has been working closely with Francois Bayrou, the leader of the French Democrate party and one of the most admired political personality in France to develop creative bridges between Internet and politics. In 2007, Christophe has founded “Internet sans frontieres”, an NGO devoted to promote the freedom of expression of every citizen throughout the web.

Christophe is listed in the Who’s Who of Personalities (France edition). Christophe is a sought after spokesperson on new media, digital revolution and the impact of the Internet on our societies. He has appeared in the European Business School, French Chamber of Commerce & Industry Symposium, numerous corporate events.

Christophe is also one of the most requested specialists about blogs. Christophe writes on his own personal blog at www.ginisty.com, one of the most linked blog in France, regularly among the top 10, and has appeared several times on TVs and radios and is considered as one of the most influent bloggers in France. In 2007, Christophe has founded the “Festival de Romans”, the first festival awarding human creativity on the Internet.

Christophe participates almost every week to a magazine on TV, broadcasted every Sunday on iTele (Canal+ group) as a communication expert. Together with 2 other professionals, he is asked to comment the news of the week in the eyes of a communication guru.

Last, Christophe is a member of “Renaissance Numérique”, a French business club lobbying the government to promote the massive adoption of technology throughout the French society.

Paul Holmes - The Holmes Report

President and Chief Executive Officer The Holmes Group

Paul Holmes is president and CEO of The Holmes Group, which provides knowledge and insight for public relations professionals, and also serves as editor of The Holmes Report, a weekly e-mail newsletter of opinion and analysis for the public relations industry.

Holmes has spent 15 years writing about the public relations industry. He was news editor of PR Week in the U.K., launch editor of PR Week in the U.S., and an editor at Adweek and Adweek's Marketing Week before launching Inside PR in 1990. For the past five years he was editor of Inside PR and Reputation Management magazine, before leaving to start his own consulting and knowledge management business at the end of 2000.

Holmes is a frequent speaker on public relations topics including trends in corporate reputation management, crisis communications, public relations ethics, agency management, and recruiting and retaining top talent. He has served as a consultant to seven of the top 10 public relations agencies in the world. He also spent 10 years as chairman of the judges for the Creativity in Public Relations Awards and currently manages the SABRE (Superior Achievement in Branding and Reputation) Awards for The Holmes Group.

Holmes was raised and educated in northern England, and worked on newspapers in Lancashire and South London before focusing on the public relations field.

Stuart Wilson CEO, MS&L UK

Stuart specialises in developing and running world-class, international corporate and B2B communications programmes.

He previously led the Corporate Communications Division at Hill & Knowlton, where he was Global Account Director for SABIC and managed the agency’s HSBC account across twenty countries.

Stuart has experience as the Global Account Leader for Deloitte Consulting, for whom he played a key role in the development of their global marketing capability across all practices and service-lines. He has a wide range of financial service experience, working on campaigns for Visa, Citibank, Franklin Templeton Management Funds, American Express and GE Capital.

Stuart has extensive crisis and issues experience, much of it in the pharmaceutical and energy sectors. This includes: patient deaths, government formula delisting, product recalls, oil spills and toxic fires. He has served as a corporate spokesperson during times of crisis and worked with key clients on crisis and issues plan development and crisis training. He was previously Co-General Manager for Cohn & Wolfe Chicago and prior to this, he was Cohn & Wolfe’s International Client Service Director.

He was heavily involved in building Cohn & Wolfe’s European network, helping to expand in Paris, Madrid and Geneva.

Stuart started his career at Glaxo Wellcome. He was a Corporate Communications Manager for four years, acting as a corporate spokesperson and leading PR programmes in the anti-viral, asthma and CNS categories.

Stuart has an Honours Undergraduate Degree in Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and a Master’s in International Political Economy from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

Fiorella Passoni - Edelman Italy

Fiorella Passoni General Manager Edelman Italy.

Fiorella joined Edelman in 1991, partner since 1997, she got the position of General Manager in 2001. Her 18 years experience spans the full spectrum of PR programming: from consumer to corporate positioning, from media relation activity to nutrition and crisis management. Fiorella has signed some of the major successes of the company and is responsible for institutional program developments towards different audiences. She has led winning programs for multinational and local clients such as Beiersdorf, Sony, Nestlé, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Samsung and Unilever as well as for institution such as the Italian Association of OTC products, the Lombardy District, the Italian Catholic Church, the Italian Lotteries and Comieco (National Consortium for the recovery and Recycling of Cellulose-based Packaging).

Fiorella has a point of strength in developing the client and in assuring a high quality performance that enables her to be recognized as a strong Client keeper, both while managing local and international clients. Fiorella is member of the Board of the Italian Association of full-service public Relation agencies ASSOREL since 2006 and is in Edelman part of the European Leadership Committee with international tasks. Fiorella started her career, after Political Science’s study, working for RAI and Mediaset. She lives in Milan with her husband Jeimi and her child Andrea Johan.

Gareth Davies - Digital, MS&L UK

Gareth heads MS&L’s London-based Digital Practice, providing consultancy and project management for clients across the agency’s portfolio, including: P&G, Samsung, Fiat, Corel and sanofi-aventis.

Gareth joined MS&L from the Rainier/Loewy group of companies, where he helped to establish a consumer-tech agency. Gareth has over eight years’ experience in both a B2B and B2C capacity working agency side and on a pan-European basis for brands including Intel, IBM, the Walt Disney Internet Group and Toshiba. He also has a wealth of experience creating high impact launch campaigns for emerging consumer brands, including: Hyundai ImageQuest, and Flybook. In addition, he was part of the marketing team that launched the Egg credit card.

Gareth's digital knowledge is drawn from many years implementing innovative and creative on-line programmes for a range of businesses of all sizes. This includes the implementation of blogger and on-line influencer campaigns across 15 countries for AMD EMEA's consumer team; on-line crisis management for e-tailer ElectricBirdLand, launch and sales-focussed campaigns for Gamepark Holdings and pure digital content creation/sales campaigns for Toshiba, including www.harddiskdriverevolution.com - a campaign which garnered substantial industry praise and awards. Gareth was educated at Sheffield Hallam University where he specialised in international marketing and creative writing .

Olle Ahnve - Jung Relations

Olle Ahnve is a digital planner at Jung Relations in Stockholm, working with clients such as Sony Ericsson, Microsoft and Pernod Ricard. Prior to this he worked as European Social Media Strategist at Text 100.

Yelena Lobova - CEO, PLEON Talan

Director of PLEON Talan PR agency that reached the TOP-3 most well-known and professional agencies in Ukraine (according to Golden Grain PR Rating 2008).

Board Member of Ukrainian Public Relations Association (UAPR).

Speaker on PR topics at Atlantic Group corporate university Talentari, UAPR academy, AIESEC educational programs, Andrey Rotovskiy PR School.

GWA winning campaign – best use of social media.

Babiy Yar Project Short Description

What would make a young boy or girl choose to buy an historic book? How can we make the younger generation interested in the factual history of World War II? Pleon Talan found answers to these difficult questions in the development and implementation of a PR campaign devoted one of the most impactful, non-fiction books of modern Ukraine – the novel Babiy Yar. The book, a true story told by an eyewitness, reveals the horrific FACTS of totalitarian regimes’ crimes. The breakthrough PR campaign placed Babiy Yar on the top-10 list of the best selling books in the country as it became one of the most discussed works of historic literature ever among the Kyiv youth.

Nick Sharples - Sony Europe

Nick Sharples is Director of Corporate Communications for Sony in Europe.

Nick Sharples challenges the perceived wisdom of media relations activity, arguing that the duration of coverage achieved by most campaigns is far too short.

2008: Director of corporate comms, Sony Europe

2001: Director of corporate comms, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

2000: Head of group PR, Energis

1998: Corporate affairs and PR manager, One 2 One

1995: Deputy director of Army PR, Ministry of Defence

1993: Company commander, 2nd Battalion, The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment

1991: Chief executive, area HQ, Northern Ireland

Fernando Rizo - Ketchum PR

Ketchum Fernando Rizo Head of Digital.

Fernando was one of the founding members and the senior strategist of Ketchum's New York-based Interactive Strategies Group (ISG). With ISG, Fernando’s work ranged from high-level social media strategic planning for clients like Nokia and IBM, to opportunistic programs and digital partnership realisation that created online buzz for clients like Hyundai and Stride Gum, to digital media education and online issues & crisis counsel for Ketchum clients and account teams all over the globe. Since his arrival in London where he is the Head of Digital, Fernando has designed and implemented extensive digital eductation programs for both Ketchum Pleon and its clients. Fernando has devised and executed programs for clients such as Philips, Kodak, and P&G brands like Olay and Fairy.

Fernando also specialises in advising clients with matters regarding to Wikipedia, where he has been an administrator since 2005.

Before joining Ketchum, Fernando was the media planner for Fly Communications, a boutique interactive ad agency in New York where his clients included Amazon.com, Pernod Ricard, The French Culinary Institute, and Register.com. He attended Columbia University and is a former United States Marine.

Robin O’Kelly - T-Mobile

Robin O’Kelly, Head of Corporate Affairs, T-Mobile.

Robin O’Kelly is currently Head of Corporate Affairs at T-Mobile and has had over 17 years experience in corporate communications.

Previous roles have included a variety of consultancy and in house positions, including Head of External Communications at BG Group plc, the FTSE 30 oil and gas company.

Prior to joining BG in September 2001, Robin was a Director at Burson Marsteller, principally tasked with developing the company’s Financial Public Relations offering. Robin was also Head of Media Relations at Mondex International, a smartcard technology company, ultimately part of MasterCard International.

Robin started his career at Weber Shandwick, where he specialized in International Corporate Communications. After graduating, Robin spent a year in academic publishing, before joining the Prince of Wales’ office, where he primarily focused on business and industry-related issues, helping to develop initiatives such as the Prince of Wales’s Business Leaders Forum and working closely with Business in the Community.

Robin lives in Wiltshire with his wire-haired dachshund Rosie, a wife and three children.

Rob Brown, autor of "PR and the Social Web"

Rob Brown, the author of 'Public Relations and the Social Web’.

Rob graduated from York University in Economics and Politics and spent a year in radio before joining Staniforth as a PR account executive. He set up his own media PR business in the 90s, working with ITV, Granada, Channel Four and several independent production companies including Endemol. He sold the business to Leedex PR (which was in turn acquired by Euro RSCG) and joined as MD of their Manchester office.

In the early 1990s he first lectured on the subject of PR and the Internet at Manchester Metropolitan University and he has frequently lectured on the subject at Universities and for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. In 1999 he left Leedex to join McCann Erickson as PR Director to set up their PR operation working there for seven years with clients as diverse as Durex, Aldi, Peugeot and the NHS. In 2008 Rob returned to Staniforth, now part of the TBWA group, as its UK Managing Director responsible for its offices in Manchester and London. He works with companies and brands that include M&S, Nissan and Kellogg’s. He is the author of 'Public Relations and the Social Web' published in the UK and USA by Kogan Page.

Elizabeth Goenawan Ananto - IPRA

ELIZABETH GOENAWAN ANANTO, President Elect 2010.

Elizabeth is a faculty member at Trisakti University in Indonesia. In addition to teaching, she has been rendering professional services to company executives, government institutions and addresses speeches in many universities and professional forums. Focusing on public relations in-house training and consultancy, she established EGA briefings in 2001.

She wrote a chapter on Public Relations Development in Indonesia in Public Relations in Asia, An Anthology (2004). She initiated Public Relations Week Indonesia, a ten-year educational campaign (2005-2014) aiming at changing public perception on the significant role of public relations in management.

A graduate from English Department at Padjadjaran University and a Master in Marketing, she joined a Postgraduate program in Public Relations at Stirling University in Scotland. She gained a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Business Management from Northern University of Malaysia in 2004.At present, she is the Coordinator of Master of Management in Communication at Graduate Program at Trisakti University.

Elizabeth will be the President of the International Public Relations Association in 2010. IPRA is a professional organization of international senior public relations practitioners with members in 100 countries organized by its secretariat in the United Kingdom.

Tim Weber - BBC News Interactive

Tim Weber is the business editor of BBC News interactive + radio, in charge of business output on domestic radio news programmes and all interactive services - the BBC News website, Ceefax, digital text and mobile platforms. Tim’s team covers business across the day on Radio 5 Live – from Wake Up to Money to the Bacon show at night – on Radio 4’s Today programme and the Chris Evans show on Radio 2.

The BBC News website has a daily reach of about 6.5 million unique users, while the business pages have a daily reach of about 1.5 million readers.

Tim is a graduate of the German School of Journalism in Munich, and holds a diploma in journalism of Munich University and a PhD in political science from Free University Berlin. He has been a journalist with the BBC since 1991, first working at BBC World Service, and since 1997 with BBC News Online – from the first day the service was launched. He is a Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum.

Maria Gergova - IPRA

Maria Gergova, IPRA President 2009.

Maria Gergova is founder and co-owner of United Partners – one of the leading PR agencies in Bulgaria. The agency has been recognised as the best PR agency in Bulgaria for 3 consecutive years and represents a number of international PR networks as MS&L, GlobalCom and BondPR, FD, PROI. Maria and United Partners have received many national and international PR awards.

Maria Gergova served as IPRA Council member for 4 years and as an IPRA Board member for further 4 years. She was elected as IPRA President for 2009 - the first IPRA president from Central/ Eastern European region. Maria Gergova is also guest lecturer in London School of PR in Bulgaria, Sofia University and New Bulgarian University. She has been a board member of Bulgarian PR society and is also founder and board member of Bulgarian Association of PR Agencies. Maria Gergova also serves on the borad of the “Dimitar Berbatov” foundation.

Maria Gergova has developed and executed PR campaigns for clients such as Procter and Gamble, Diageo, Western Union, ING Bank, IBM, European commission, Philips, Unicef etc.

In 2002 she was chosen as as PR specialist of the year by Bulgarian PR Society.

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