Who, Where and When

2012 Event Host

Louise Minchin

Louise Minchin is one of the BBC's top journalists and presenters. She currently presents Breakfast, the BBC One O’Clock News and Real Rescues on BBC One, and she is one of the BBC News Channel's main anchors.

Louise is also a regular guest presenter on The One Show, where she has interviewed amongst others Will Smith, Joan Collins and Meat Loaf and was levitated by Penn and Teller.

This year she will present her 4th series of Missing, on BBC One. As a result of appeals made on the programme over a dozen missing people have been reunited with their families.

In November 2009 Louise was one of 12 celebrities who took part in Around the World in 80 Days for BBC One to raise money for Children in Need. She travelled through Mongolia and South Korea and across the Pacific in a container ship with Breakfast's Bill Turnbull.

During her career as a news presenter Louise has covered the main news stories of the last decade, including the 7/7 London bombings, the UK's 2010 general election, and the BP oil spill. She presented the BBC's Ten O'clock news the day Saddam Hussein was hanged.

Louise trained as a journalist at the London College of Printing. She has a degree in Spanish from the University of St Andrews and spent a year living and working in Argentina as part of her degree.

Louise has played herself as a news presenter in Torchwood, Spooks, and Silent Witness. She has also appeared on Celebrity Mastermind, Ready Steady Cook, Celebrity Eggheads and Ask Rhod Gilbert.

Louise is a highly skilled conference facilitator and chair, and is a sought after host of award ceremonies and events.

Speaker

Jo Fairley

In 1991, Jo Fairley co-founded the pioneering organic chocolate company Green & Black’s (with her husband Craig Sams), which has now gone on to be ‘bigger than Marmite’ (in sales terms) and ‘cooler than Prada’ (Coolbrands 2007/2008); in the Coolbrands Survey 2009, Green & Black’s was the only food brand in the top 20.

In 2005, the brand was sold to Cadbury’s, but Jo remains in an ambassadorial role, travelling the world as the brand grows internationally in countries including the US and Australia. In 2008 Jo and her husband Craig Sams collaborated on Sweet Dreams: The Story of Green & Black’s (Random House).

Jo now runs Judges Bakery - an organic one-stop shop - and The Wellington Centre, an 11-room ‘boutique’ wellbeing centre, in her home town of Hastings. She continues to juggle this with her writing career: although she left school at 16 (with six ‘O’ Levels), by the age of 23 Jo was the youngest-ever magazine editor in the UK, editing first Look Now and then Honey Magazine. She is a Contributing Editor to the Mail on Sunday’s YOU Magazine, as well as to a very wide range of publications including the new National Geographic Green.

She is the co-author (with Sarah Stacey) of the bestselling Beauty Bible series of books, the world’s bestselling beauty books, including: The Beauty Bible, Feel Fab Forever: The Anti-Ageing Health & Beauty Bible, The 21st Century Beauty Bible, The Handbag Beauty Bible and most recently The Green Beauty Bible, which combines her ‘green’ expertise with her insights into the beauty world. She is also author of The Ultimate Natural Beauty Book.

For eight years Jo chaired the Soil Association’s Health Products Standards Committee, helping to set the standards for organic and natural bodycare in the UK. She is a ‘matron’ of the Women’s Environmental Network, runs makeover workshops for young women at Centrepoint and sits on the Human Rights Watch Film Festival committee.

"Jo met the brief and event objectives 100%. She handled everything with the up-most professionalism and her comments were enlightening.

" Jergens Naturals “Jo met our objectives very well - she was an excellent speaker, engaging, on subject and very motivating”. T Mobile

“Jo was well prepared for presentations she delivered, a delight on-site to work with, and inspired our audience” Venture Marketing Group