about helen > career biography

Helen has a history of start ups, beginning at the BBC where she worked on a number of current affairs start up series (Public Eye and Assignment), the think tank Demos, her dot com venture, www.elancentric.com founded in April 2000 (dissolved in December 2003), and most recently Genderquake Limited, www.genderquake.com, founded Spring 2002.

Over the years, her historic experience in traditional media (broadcast and print) has been enhanced by considerable experience in new media. And her policy research, forecasting, communications and advocacy work in the non-profit and social enterprise sector has increasingly been underpinned by commercial experience, most recently with the founding of www.genderquake.com.

Her research, forecasting and policy expertise can reach public, and political audiences as well as being tailored to commercial clients. Increasingly she enjoys working closely with individuals - micro entrepreneurs, people interested in making change. Her fundraising expertise for non-profit research based causes is also complemented by fundraising experience with angel networks, incubators, corporate financiers and venture capitalists, an experience which informed my report, Dot Bombshell - women, e-quality and the new economy (2001) and the formation of Genderquake Limited.

She has lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic, and been an international adviser to the Women in Silicon Valley project as well as having an academic base at the Institute for Women's Leadership in California as one of their visiting fellows in 2001-2002. She also had a detailed knowledge of the charitable and social enterprise sector having worked in and around the sector in various guises for over a decade, and had contact with charities and NGOs during her period as a journalist and TV producer before that.

Helen also has experience of start up ventures and is skilled in setting up the systems, and change management processes that are so essential to long-term sustainable organisational growth. Her experience at DrugScope, as Director of Information and Policy, gave her a 360 degree perspective on the challenges of turning around a medium sized national NGO in a post merger environment. At Kids Clubs Network, now 4Children, she provided leadership to a 25 strong Development team to prepare them for the challenges of their own organisational rebranding to 4Children, and to the new policy and service opportunities opening up in children's services in the wake of the Green Paper.

Further career highlights and chronology are summarised below:

• Interim Director of Development, Kids Clubs Network, www.kidsclubs.org.uk, and 4Children, www.4Children.org.uk, between April 2003 to end of April 2004 rebuilding the team and creating the infrastructure and medium to long term framework to realise the development strategy through the refocusing of senior management competencies and bandwidth in the organisation. This strategy consultancy and interim management was provided through Genderquake Limited;

• Founder and Director of Genderquake Limited, www.genderquake.com, strategy consultancy on gender change and www.elancentric.com, business community for elancers - internet enabled home and mobile workers;

• Director of Information and Policy and part of the Strategic Management Group, DrugScope, the leading independent centre of expertise on drugs policy in the UK, www.drugscope.org.uk, July 2002-March 2003;

• A freelance ideas entrepreneur - an associate of the Industrial Society's Futures Division, Demos Associate on work-life issues and bespoke research and communication projects (including the Bread for Life campaign run by the Flour Advisory Bureau to encourage healthy eating among young women);

• a founding pioneering member of the think tank Demos, where she raised half a million pounds for the organisation, developed the research, public affairs, and communications capacity of the organisation, and published several ground breaking reports/pamphlets, many of which have become government policy or spotted trends and policy issues years ahead of time. She still sits on its Advisory Council;

• Research and Policy Development - Helen has worked in Parliament, Congress and the National Consumer Council as an adviser and has also advised national government departments. She has also worked with a range of think tanks nationally and internationally - including the New York based Families and Work Institute between 1997-1998;

• a national columnist - The Independent (1995-1996) and Management Today (2000-2001) and regular contributor to the comment pages of the nationals;

• strategic consultant - to organisations as varied as Canon Europa, Coopers and Lybrand, BBC, and Northern Foods, on issues as varied as organisational change, work-life balance, recruitment and retention of women and Generation X and since 2001, she has added innovative internet strategy consultancy and change management to her varied consultancy portfolio, with clients including the Cabinet Office, CMPS, and NCVO and the VSNTO, a consortium of government and the voluntary sector on promoting partnership on web strategy for promoting partnership working, www.ourpartnership.org.uk;

• Writer & Author - Helen has authored a wide range of books, pamphlets, edited and published magazines, and collections, as well as contributing innumerable chapters, articles to a wide range of publications (link to publications page) from the populist to the academic;

• Journalist - for newspapers and magazines as varied as Personnel Today, New Statesman, as well as newspapers like The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times writing columns, features and opinion pieces;

• Broadcaster - co-presenter of The Big Idea series, Friends and Family, BBC 2, 1999 on the future of the family, a consultant to the Channel 4 Genderquake series in 1995 and to has been a regular guest and commentator on radio and TV programmes as varied as Newsnight, Radio Five Live, BBC Breakfast, Channel Four News etc;

• a BBC TV current affairs producer, between 1989-1994 latterly on Newsnight