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The Creatives
Martin Hennessey
Martin is our MD. A former print and broadcast journalist, he founded The
Writer in 2000. He has worked on editorial strategy with Barclays,
Deutsche Bank, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, BT and Imagination. He's also a
founder member of business writers' group 26, and a former judge of the
Writing for Design category at the D&AD Awards.
John Simmons
John's a former director of verbal identity at Interbrand and author of
several business bestsellers, including We, Me, Them & It – the power of
words in business. He co-edited The Economist Guide to Brands and
Branding, writes a regular column about brands in the Observer, and is
series editor of the Great Brand stories. John's also a founder member of
business writers group 26, and has served on the Writing for Design jury at
the D&AD awards, once as chairman.
Neil Taylor
Neil spends most of his time training people to become better writers at
work. He works with people like the BBC, Unilever and Ofgem. When he's
not doing that, he also writes, comes up with names, and helps brands
define their tone of voice. He's written two books on branding, The Name of
the Beast, on naming, and Search Me: The surprising success of Google. He's
written for the Guardian, Design Week and regularly appears on CNN. He's
a former senior consultant at Interbrand, and is on the board of not-for-
profit writers' group 26.
Nick Parker
We're feeling rather smug that we've lured Nick away from the magazine
world to run workshops for us. He spent five years as deputy editor of The
Oldie — ‘the most original magazine in the country' (so said the
Independent). Since he joined us he's been training people like BT,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Pension Protection Fund and NB Real Estate.
He also wrote a monthly column for Director magazine debunking business
jargon, and his short stories also turn up regularly in anthologies and on
Radio 4.
Anelia Varela
Anelia went from advertising in South Africa to branding and writing for
design in London before settling down at The Writer in 2005. She wears
many hats here: the creative director one when she looks after our team of
writers; the consultant one when she runs tone of voice and naming
projects; and sometimes the tricorn that she kept after a pirate-themed
Christmas party. She's run some pretty big tone of voice, writing and
naming projects for the likes of O2, Telefónica, Lucozade, BT Global Services
and Nike, and you can still see her words on Guinness bottles.
Charli Matthews
Charli's our New York based writer-trainer-speaker. That means she writes for our clients, defines their tone of voice, and then gets them using it by designing and
running workshops. She spends most of her time on trains, planes, in hotels
and on stage. She's written for and trained the likes of BT, Lucozade,
Telefónica, PwC, Matalan and, in a previous life, the MoD and MI5 (although
that's very hush hush). And when she's not in the office, Charli spends her
time running foodie walking tours around the East End of London.
Naturally.
Ed Yeoman
Ed came to The Writer after two and a half years in integrated marketing
(he's still not sure what that means), where he wrote for Lynx, New Look,
Mates and 3M. Now he spends most of his time writing about phones and
talking about how there aren't enough Pret A Mangers in London. He's got a
degree in history, a passing interest in facial hair, and his motto is ‘if it isn't
surrounded by bread, it's not lunch'.
Nick Padmore
Before joining The Writer, Nick spent a few wilderness years in ad-land
using words like Free, Win and, in difficult times,
Please? He's since started to make a bit more sense. If you check his
screen, you'll usually see something about phones. But if his brow seems
particularly knitted, he's probably writing about whisky or football. On his
desk are three grapes, a hedgehog and two bottles of Clarins Active Hand
Care.
Roshni Goyate
After graduating with a degree in English, Roshni tried to avoid the
teacher, perpetual academic and librarian routes. So she went to volunteer at a
housing association for disabled people. She remained a closeted writer until
she was outed by us (we lured her in with cake and exposed brickwork).
She's since written for various clients including Matalan, BT and O2.
Roshni's cake consumption is at an all-time high. She works it off by playing
samba.
Jan Dekker
Jan came to us after ten years at the Design Council, where he was on a
mission to convince people that ‘I'd like to talk to you about...' sounds better
than ‘I am writing with regard to...' Since then he's been helping us make
confusing words make sense and sensible words sound human, leaving
words like ‘optimise', ‘leverage' and ‘solution' in his wake. He's worked on
new business bids, websites, brand stories, presentations, training,
brochures and newspapers for clients like PwC, BT Global Services, Reckitt
Benckiser, Logica and Carling.
Laura Carus
Laura used to be a PR consultant, but harboured a secret desire to be a
writer. So after seven years of schmoozing, she hung up her pashmina and
pursued her true calling. She's written about everything from cloud
computing to fish fingers, and has worked with the likes of Cadbury, British
Gas, Cycling England, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Unilever.
Before joining The Writer, Laura was a corporate writer at PA Consulting
Group, where she edited the website, drafted the annual report and ghost-
wrote for the CEO and senior partners.
Ana Fletcher
Ana came to The Writer from PEN International – a human rights and
literature organisation – where she spent her days pestering poets to apply
for their visas. At The Writer she edits, writes and does a spot of training.
Ana seldom misses an opportunity to mention the fact she's fluent in
Spanish and Portuguese, or that she has an MA in Comparative Literature.
When not busy boasting, she dabbles in literary translation and rails
against the patriarchy.
Emma Wilkin
Emma came to The Writer after editing books in a variety of fields including
biotechnology, intellectual property, postgraduate funding, interior design,
road traffic law and, her personal favourite, sewage facilities. She's a
stickler for grammar and punctuation and once caused a major traffic jam
after getting out of her car, marker pen in hand, to add an apostrophe to a
signpost (‘Britain's oldest recorded town').
Client team
Anya Zhuravkina
Anya, as her name suggests, is Russian, but she lived in England for a
large chunk of her life. She's now our representative in New York, but often goes back to her homeland to visit family and stock up on Russian chocolate and cranberry vodka. Before The Writer she ran market research for Land Rover and Honda. She now looks after BT at The Writer.
George Smith
George joined us from the wilderness of Classics and education. After being
hounded by the possibility of teaching and tweed jackets, he joined us here
at The Writer. In his spare time he goes on mammoth runs, plays guitar
and memorises every line from Die Hard. Everyone needs a hobby. These
days George talks to the likes of PepsiCo, GSK and Arcadia.
Rebecca Tobi
After graduating with a degree that no one really understands (ancient and modern history if you're interested), via a slightly odd detour as an intern at a parenting website, Rebecca ended up at The Writer. It's her job to keep you happy every step of the way. She'll be the person checking in with you to make sure everything's ticking along as it should.
Abby Worth
Like everyone over here at The Writer, Abby's a right word geek. After
graduating with a first in Literature from the University of Bristol, and
working as an editor on several creative magazines, she decided to join the
team. Over here, Abby looks after clients we know as well making lots of
new friends for us too. And when she's not talking to business people, she's
baiting musicians for BoomTing records.
Project management
Natalie Saul
After a four-year stint working for Ferrari, Nat joined The Writer as office
manager. Alongside managing diaries, fixing computers, booking meetings,
keeping us in biscuits and making sure we don't trip over and break our
writing hands, she's the star of weekly meeting spot, ‘Nat's Joke', and does a
freakishly good Tina Turner impression. (Seriously. It's like she's
channelling.) Is there nothing Miss Saul can't do? We think not.
Miranda Murphy-Merrydew
Miranda started out life at the BBC in marketing for radio and music,
running campaigns to get people to join the digital revolution and listen to
the wireless more. She moved into project management in design agencies
to be get more hands-on in the creative world. And then, having been a fan
of The Writer from afar, she took the plunge into the world of words. Now
she looks after people like RBS, Logica, Ofgem and the Climate Group.
Tara Jones
Tara spent five and half years as a director's PA at River Island before
leaving the world of free clothes to study Psychology with Linguistics as a
mature student. After graduating she volunteered at a Kenyan orphanage
and travelled round Africa, South East Asia and New Zealand. Soon after
returning to the UK Tara joined The Writer, where she now manages
writing projects for clients like O2, Twinings, NB Real Estate and the BBC,
and co-ordinates all our training.
Ally Hay
Before us, Ally dabbled in studio and project management at a design
agency. She decided she really should put her obsessive organisational skills
to good use, and become a proper project manager. So she came to us. We
showed her how to embrace her obsessive organising, and put her to work
looking after the likes of Thames Water, E.ON, Lucozade and GMC – and
that's just to name a few. She's a closet creative, and does freelance
illustration jobs in her spare time.
Gem Alkis
Gem's real name is Cemile Alkis. But it's not that easy to pronounce, so now
she's just ‘Gem'. Over the years she's worked as a special projects
coordinator for a company that published pharmaceutical magazines. Not
very glamorous, but she did get free shampoo and makeup. She's also
worked at a media agency doing planning for Procter & Gamble, where the
freebies included washing powder and more shampoo. At The Writer she
works mainly on PwC, coordinating the huge global rollout of their new
tone of voice. So far she's only got a PwC keyring to show for it, but we're
working on that.
Alex Pointet
Many moons ago, Alex tried her hand at events management. She
organised la-di-dah soirees for people like The Elephant Family and Browns.
She quickly discovered she preferred being at events and not running them.
Now she sorts out all things training at The Writer, for companies like O2,
Aviva, Thames Water, Logica and Whitechapel Gallery to name a few. She
also runs The Writer Book Club, and has a borderline unhealthy obsession
with Jamie Oliver. |
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