Authors

Sebastian St. John-Clarke is a freelance writer and B2B communications consultant. He has dedicated a lot of his career to the insurance sector, working with Hiscox as our Head of Group Communications for a time. Sebastian has since set up his own small communications business, Paper Plane Communications (external link).

Shaab Al-baghdadi is head of channel and strategic relationships at Blackfoot UK Ltd. Starting his career in traded options and futures he has held various senior management and directorship roles in multiple verticals from finance to retail. He has worked extensively in the Middle East and North Africa, covering GO’s and NGO’s and developed strategies to enable international trade utilising financial instruments such as LC’s and trade debt. He recently worked at IBM helping partners and managing service providers develop business solutions and market differentiators. “Understanding the market and how its changing is essential in order to remain competitive, creating opportunities these changes present is what makes an organisation exceptional”. He is a fellow of the institute of directors, and a member of the international association of privacy professionals.

Simon Challis began his media career delivering papers as a boy before becoming a journalist in the mid-1990s. He worked in financial magazines and at Reuters before setting up his own media consulting firm, The Townfield Consultancy (external link), when he spotted an opportunity to redefine the PR agency model. Challis has spent years talking to entrepreneurs about what makes a successful small business, and hopes to collect enough tips one of these days to build one himself.

Stephen Ridley is Lead Cyber Underwriter and Product Head for cyber and data risks at Hiscox UK and Ireland.

Steve Langan, CEO Hiscox Insurance USA and our UK & Europe CEO before that, joined Hiscox in October 2005 after a global career in blue chip FMCG companies. Langan has, in a short time, transformed a respected business into a powerful consumer franchise. His responsibilities now expand beyond strategies for our product lines and global brand development. Amongst other things, Langan is also responsible for the Hiscox Art Collection; an internationally recognised corporate collection of over 1,000 pieces spread throughout the thirty-two Hiscox offices around the world.

Steve McGerr is the Head of Direct Commercial for Hiscox UK. Having joined Hiscox in 2002, Steve has previously worked in claims, underwriting and regional management roles within our business insurance department. Steve has a wealth of experience working with businesses and understanding their insurance needs. This had made him a valued contributer to articles from The Insurance Times (external link) and The Guardian (external link). McGerr is ACII qualified and is a Hiscox Partner.

News, BBC Radio, The Financial Times, RTÉ, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Team GB, British Council, BBC Academy, Bank of England, Immediate Media group and many others. Sue pioneered the introduction of ‘Twitter Masterclasses’ in the heart of the BBC newsroom and since 2009 has been responsible for designing and leading most of the social media training rolled out across the corporation. In 2013 she was voted one of the Top 50 female innovators in Digital Journalism. She also regularly talks at conferences across Europe (external link) about the psychology of social media, and driving digital change in newsrooms.

Tamara founded Emoderation - now The Social Element (external link), a global social media agency, in 2002 to share her passion for making the internet a safer place. From the early days of online forum moderation to the explosion of Facebook and Twitter, Tamara has used her expertise to develop best practice standards for digital media on branded online channels. With a background in content management, consultancy and operations for the pioneering BBC communities team and Liberty Media, she has extensive experience in community management, child safety, social media consultancy, and crisis communications.

Terry Ramsey is a journalist and critic who has worked for The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The London Evening Standard, The Independent, Business Life and High Life magazine. As well as his review pieces, Ramsey also offer media training and lectures to professionals in his field.

Thomas Brown is the former Director of Strategy and Marketing at CIM (external link) (The Chartered Institute of Marketing). There, he took the lead on strategy, brand, marketing, innovation, research, content and the project management office. After leaving in 2016, he set up Think Stuff (external link) to offer strategic consultancy services to small UK businesses.

Tim Smith leads the technology, media and telecoms group at BLM. He specialises in dealing with claims relating to defamation, malicious falsehood, breach of confidence, privacy and data protection and leads the firm’s cyber team. Nick Gibbons has over 20 years’ experience in advising corporate and insurance customers in relation to technology and media legal issues. Areas of particular specialism include advice on data protection, e-commerce, defective software, website development, passing off, copyright infringement, breach of confidence, trademark and domain name disputes particularly those relating to TMT, IP and cyber risk.

Tom Dixon is the Head of Technology at Hiscox. Tom is responsible for the entire technology account, including the pricing, underwriting and proposition and has over 10 years of experience writing technology risks. He’s been lucky enough to meet some of the brightest and boldest technology businesses in the UK.