eiClub Team & Ambassadors
Editorial Intelligence is committed to helping individuals and corporations seeking personal and professional excellence achieve it by developing deeper personal connections and having a more profound understanding of today’s information-overloaded landscape.
Peter Bale, Chief Executive-Designate, The Center for Public Integrity
Peter Bale is the chief executive-designate of The Center for Public Integrity, the world’s leading investigative news organisation, based in Washington. Peter joined the Center from CNN where he headed digital operations outside the United States. A former Reuters correspondent and editor he was a founder of FTMarketWatch and was online editorial director of The Times and The Sunday Times. He spent four years at Microsoft running MSN editorial in the UK and then as global editorial director. He is also on the board of the Global Editors Network and a regular contributor to Speakers For Schools.
Book(s) I recommend: “It was a long time ago and it never happened anyway,” David Satter on Russia and its legacy from the former Soviet Union. Yale University Press.
Favourite Art form/Artists: Jazz, currently Robert Glasper and Christian Scott.
Favourite Place: Vejer de la Frontera, Andalucia
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Simon Schama
Kane Balkwill – eiAmbassador
Following a successful year in postgraduate education, Kane graduated in 2013 with an MA in Cultural and Creative Industries from King’s College London, where he specialised in Culture and Commerce and Internet and Digital Culture. Previously Kane worked as a Media Analyst for leading media monitoring organisation Precise, working with a diverse portfolio of clients from financial services to arts and culture and local government. Prior to joining Editorial Intelligence, Kane gained experience in PR and marketing through a number of internships and had the pleasure of working alongside some of the UK’s finest cultural institutes.
Book(s) I recommend: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang
Favourite Art form/Artists: Dada / Leigh Bowery
Favourite Place: Allerdale, Cumbria
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Raymond Williams
Rachel Horigan – eiClub Co-ordinator
Rachel graduated from Durham University in 2013 with a first class degree in history, with a focus on modern Africa. She has since worked with a Palestinian educational charity and as the production assistant for a series of fashion shows across London Fashion Week. She has enjoyed 4 months travelling in South East Asia and somehow found herself au pairing for French Aristocracy. She hopes to plot future adventures abroad and would one day like to work in documentary production.
Book(s) I recommend: John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Azar Nafis' Reading Lolita in Tehran:A memoir in books, Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assasin, Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex
Favourite Art form/Artists: A Wes Anderson film…
Favourite Place: A good coffee shop…
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Shakespeare, Jon Ronson, Chet Baker
Peter York – eiClub Co-Chair & Associate
Peter York is one of the UK’s leading strategic researchers. Also known as Peter Wallis, he co-founded the influential management consultancy SRU with Lord Stevenson. He is a former Board Trustee of Arts & Business and of the Tate Members’ Council. As Peter York, the writer, author and broadcaster on social styles and trends he writes regularly for the Independent and other broadsheets. He co-wrote the 80s bestseller The Sloane Ranger Handbook. (His update of it – Cooler, Faster, More Expensive – The Return of the Sloane Ranger, co-authored with Olivia Stewart-Liberty, was published in October 2007.) His BBC documentary, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Ad-Man’, was shown on BBC2 in September 2010. His latest book 'The Blue Riband' was published by Penguin in 2013.
Book(s) I recommend: Miss Piggy's Guide to Life
Favourite Art form/Artists:Interior Decoration
Favourite Place: Pimlico
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Barry Humphries
Harvey Goldsmith – eiClub Co-Chair & Board Member
Harvey is a legendary and visionary producer and promoter of rock concerts, charity events and television broadcasts. He has produced managed and promoted shows with most of the world’s major artists and was responsible for the two largest music events in the world, ever; Live Aid and Live 8. Harvey continues to promote and produce music shows to this very day. Harvey has received numerous awards including, CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 1996 and more recently to celebrate HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Harvey received the Diamond Award for his contribution to The Arts. In July 2012, Harvey received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Brighton. In June 2013 Harvey produced ‘Sound of Change Live’ at Twickenham Stadium, a four hour star-studded show presented by CHIME FOR CHANGE: recently founded by Gucci, which campaigns for improved Education, Health and Justice for women and girls worldwide.
Book(s) I recommend: Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore and Resilience by Andrew Zolli
Favourite Art form/Artists: Music – The Who
Favourite Place: Portugal
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Keith Richards
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Writer and Commentator
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a journalist who has written for The Guardian, Observer, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Evening Standard, The Mail and other newspapers and is now a regular columnist on The Independent and London’s Evening Standard. She is also a radio and television broadcaster and author of several books. From 1996 to 2001 she was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre. She is also a regular international public speaker. In June 1999, she received an honorary degree from the Open University for her contributions to social justice. She is a Vice President of the United Nations Association, UK and has also agreed to be a special ambassador for the Samaritans. She is the President of the Institute of Family Therapy. She was also appointed Visiting Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln.
Viv Groskop – Columnist, Observer
Viv Groskop is a columnist, critic and comedian. She writes for The Independent and The Observer and appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and TV's Sky News. She is artistic director of the Independent Bath Literature Festival which takes place annually in March. She discovered stand-up in her late thirties and is now making up for lost time, reaching the Finals of Funny Women 2012 and winning Spontaneity Shop’s Maestro Improv 2012. Her first book I Laughed, I Cried: How OneWoman Took on Stand-Up and (Almost) Ruined Her Life (Orion) is about an attempt to perform 100 gigs in 100 nights, described as "heroic" by The Times and "frankly psychotic" by the Mail on Sunday. @VivGroskop
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
Helena is a barrister, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. She is an expert in human rights law, civil liberties and constitutional issues and has received many honours for her work. Current chair of Justice – the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists, she was the Chair of the British Council and Chair of the Human Genetics Commission. She recently produced a report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission on Human Trafficking in Scotland and was a member of the Government Commission on a British Bill of Rights. A Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, she is also the Co-Chair of the International Bar Association’s Institute of Human Rights. She is Principal of Mansfield college, Oxford.
Toby Mundy – Founding Director, TMA Agency
Toby Mundy is the Director of TMA, an agency that represents authors and help brands publish. He is also a member of the steering committee of the Samuel Johnson Prize, Britain’s leading award for non-fiction; on the editorial board of the monthly current affairs magazine, Prospect (where he was a NED for 7 years); and the board of the think-tank Demos. He is also a Trustee of Wimbledon Bookfest. From 2008-13, he sat on the International Advisory Board of the Legatum Institute think tank in London. He appears regularly on the Evening Standard’s list of London’s ‘1,000 Most Influential People’ and was ranked at number 54 in the Guardian’s list of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the British Book Industry’.
Book(s) I recommend: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Favourite Art form/Artists: Portraiture
Favourite Place: The Languedoc
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Barack Obama
Geraldine Sharpe-Newton, President, The Media Society
Geraldine was head of communications for CBS News in New York. Later, in London, she held that role for ITN and Turner Broadcasting’s CNNInternational as well as being a Director at WWF. She has worked at the heart of media relations for longer than she cares to mention. Her early years in the USA as a journalist and TV producer led her to Burson-Marsteller PR, the launch of the America end of the Economist and she was a VP at Simon & Shuster.
Following her involvement in the ‘seamless’ transition at CBS News from anchorman Walter Cronkite to Dan Rather, she became known as ‘Sharpe-Practice’.
In the UK she became the Chair of the International Women’s Forum and a Director at WWF. Currently she is a business mentor at the Princes Trust, Critical Eye and Clarity-the Writing Experts. She also advises and trains senior executives on all matters pertaining to the media and is a Trustee of Theatre 503 and the Development Committee of the Tricycle Theatre.
Favourite Art form/Artists: Not easy as I'm a collector of all kinds of stuff-from textiles to ceramics. My walls have no room for another painting but I just saw a Cecil Collins that I covet. Mary Newcomb for her light touch and humour..And then there are my travels….Nothing is better then finding something that speaks to me and comes home.
Favourite Places: Springtime in the English country side as everything awakes from a grey, bleak winter-Birdsong, daffodils, bluebells, and the greenest green fields. And then anywhere my travels take me.
Desert Island Dinner Companion: Oh I would love Clive James – rich in poetry, thought, ideas-and humour. Now if I have to stay – Mark Shand [sadly died much too soon] he would be great for being with in the wild, plus he was one 'dishy' fellow. I'd like the elephant to come along.
Alice Sherwood, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, The Policy Institute @ King's, King’s College London
Alice worked in business and media for over 20 years, for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 on documentaries, discussion programmes and format development, before moving into New Media as Head of Audience for the BBC’s Digital Curriculum. Previously she worked for Andersen Consulting, before leaving to do an MBA at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, and then in strategy consultancy and private equity for clients including Marks & Spencer, Carphone Warehouse, Kingfisher plc, Storehouse, IBM and Piper Trust (now Piper Private Equity). As well as these activities, she is the author of a best-selling cookbook (Dorling Kindersley 2008), published in 15 languages to date and reprinted by Marks & Spencer in 2013; written on subjects from food and technology to psychology and economics; been a trustee for Shelter (6 years) and The London Library (4 years), and worked on pro-bono projects for Royal Academy (licensing) and Covent Garden (digital innovation). She is also the Chairman of The Kit Cat Club (no relation to the 18th century original): a not-for-profit speaker organisation with all-female membership, which for 25 years has expanded the knowledge and opportunities of women starting out in their careers.Book(s) I recommend: The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher (revelatory!). Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (and almost any Lord Peter Wimsey novel)
Favourite Art form/Artists: Currently obsessed by Typography. (see nerdy discussion of best ever Typographers on http://typophile.com/node/30388!)
Favourite Places: London. Anywhere the Sabra Cactus grows
Desert Island Dinner Companion: If I can’t choose my family (is that allowed?), I’d say Simon Schama!
Stefan Stern, Business Commentator and Columnist
Stefan Stern has been writing and commenting on business, management and politics for over two decades. His career has taken him to Euromoney publications, the BBC, the Industrial Society (now the Work Foundation), Management Today magazine, and the FT, where he was a columnist between 2006 and 2010. He was director of strategy at Edelman until the summer of 2013, when he returned to writing.In October 2010 Stefan was appointed Visiting Professor in management practice at the Cass business school, London. He is a Fellow of the RSA and contributing editor at Management Today magazine. He continues to write for The Independent, The Guardian the Daily Telegraph and he is a columnist for the FT, the International Business Times and the Labour List web site. Stefan lives in south London. He is married with two daughters.
Book(s) I recommend: The Village Effect by Susan Pinker and The Best Place To Work by Ron Friedman – two interesting and related studies on the role of (and need for) community.
Favourite Art form/Artists: My children's influence but I am rather enjoying the works of Taylor Swift and One Direction.
Favourite Place: probably my kitchen.
Desert Island Dinner Companion: If not my wife then my companion would have to be Arthur Miller. Living: Simon Schama.