Rishi Dastidar is a copywriter, brand strategist and poet. Currently head of verbal identity at strategic branding agency BrandPie, he has worked for a wide variety of brands during his career, including O2, EY and EDF Energy. His poetry has been published by the Financial Times, BBC Local Radio, Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre, And Other Poems and Poems in Which, amongst many others. A fellow of The Complete Works II, the Arts Council England-funded development programme for Black and Asian poets in the UK, his debut collection Ticker-tape will be published by Nine Arches Press in March 2017.

Sandeep is the Director of Nottingham City of Literature. She is also Literary Consultant at Slam Films. She works with Slam’s creative team on all literary acquisitions and serves as the company’s primary liaison with the publishing industry, and in that capacity identifies book-to-film/TV opportunities. Sandeep was until recently Director of The Space – a commissioning agency supporting greater digital access to the arts co-founded by Arts Council England and the BBC – and launched their major partnership initiatives, international prizes and Open commissioning schemes, developing artists from a range of backgrounds to engage with digital media and technology. A librarian by training, she worked in public libraries for ten years and was formerly Head of Partnerships at The Reading Agency. Here she led a powerful partnership consortium transforming the way UK publishers and the public library network collaborated, taking a leading role in re-imagining the library experience for a digital age. She was a judge for the Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2013, named The Bookseller’s Rising Star in 2012, awarded a Fellowship from the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme in 2013.

Mike Clarke is director of libraries and archives for tri-borough – three central London boroughs that have innovatively got together to share services: the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and City of Westminster. Together they have 1 million books, 21 libraries and three archive services, serving over half a million residents and almost 5 million visitors to their libraries each year. Mike is a chartered librarian, executive committee member of the Association of London Chief Librarians and its past president. Previously he has worked in local government in Camden, Merton, Leicester and Manchester and also at the BBC and Arts Council England and was director of the London Libraries Development Agency. He is incredibly excited about the transformational power of literature and reading and the way public libraries and writers can interact to develop new audiences and engage with a wide range of communities and readers.

Katie Roden is a publishing, marketing and content strategy consultant. She has a 24-year trade publishing background, including 11 years as Director of Consumer Education at Hachette UK and, as Publisher at Guardian Books, creating the Guardian Shorts ebook list and helping form the Guardian Faber imprint. In recent years she has worked on publishing ideas, marketing campaigns and communication strategies for some of the UK’s biggest publishers and author brands, from military fiction to secondary education. Katie is the co-founder of book design blog Fixabook and is a freelance consultant for the Seven League digital agency.

Sophie Rochester has worked in publishing since 1996. She founded The Literary Platform in 2009, initially as a free online resource dedicated to exploring new platforms for literature, and later as a specialist consultancy working with writers, literary agents, publishers and literary organisations.

In 2010 she launched, supported by Arts Council England, the National Lottery funded Fiction Uncovered – which became the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize – dedicated to celebrating the work of British fiction writers. Previously she worked in communications at publishers Routledge, 4th Estate and Jonathan Cape, Random House. 

At Colman Getty, she was Associate Director and worked on the Man Booker Prizes, The Hay Festival, The Poetry Archive, launched by Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, and many other literary projects. 

She has been a speaker on publishing at TOC New York, the Frankfurt Book Fair, Bologna Book Fair, Editech Milan, British Council Crossing the River conferences in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong; Electric Bookshop Edinburgh, FutureBook Innovation Workshop, London Art Book Fair and Alphaville at Whitechapel Gallery.

She is a visiting lecturer at the London College of Communications ‘MA in Publishing’, Goldsmiths University ‘BA in English and Media’ and UEA’s ‘MA in Creative Writing’.

Kate Noakes is retired Chartered Accountant living in London. She spent her 35 year career with the Big Four accounting firms, specialising in corporate international tax advisory work. Her clients were some of the world’s largest multi-nationals. A widely published poet and elected member of the Welsh Academy of Letters, she acts as the finance trustee. She has degrees in Geography, and English Literature from Reading University and an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales. Her website, www. boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com provides details on her books, publications, and writing and coaching projects and is archived by the National Library of Wales.

Samantha is the UKI HR Director at Accenture providing a comprehensive range of HR and Recruitment services across all business areas. Her HR Business Partner experience is principally in Professional Services and she has skills in managing complex employee relations projects, designing diversity strategies, devising talent plans, developing policies, coaching at Board level and running major change programmes. In addition to her role as HR Director, since October 2012 she has also been the Accenture Teach First Community sponsor, dedicating her time and efforts to supporting the Community in its work to address educational disadvantage.

Aimée Felone is co-founder of newly launched Knights Of – a commercial children’s publisher whose main focus is hiring diversely and commissioning writers and illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds. She has always been a supportive and engaged voice within the Industry and has worked tirelessly to promote inclusivity and diversity.