The Team
Hilary Goldsmith – (Co-organiser)
Hilary is addicted to TED, having first stumbled across it by accident. She’s a serial TED attendee, having been to TEDActive three times, in Aspen and then in Palm Springs, and currently planning her fourth trip. For her, there is nothing quite like the concentrated input from fascinating people wrapped around with endless discussions with even more fascinating fellow attendees. TEDxGranta gives her the opportunity to create some of that same buzz closer to home. In her day job, Hilary runs her own management consultancy. She believes that the breadth of ideas and the sheer brain exercise prompted by TED helps her to bring creativity and a challenge to established perspectives and orthodox thinking into her work.
Vandy Massey - (Co-organiser)
Vandy has spent a frightening number of hours avidly watching TED talks online since she stumbled across the TED website. TED talks tick all the boxes for her and getting to a TED conference was on her list of must-do things. When the idea of setting up TEDxGranta came along it seemed the perfect way to make that happen without having to spend half a day in an airplane. Vandy founded a company that helps people become more aware of the way they work with others. She’s involved with initiatives to foster creative thinking and works on her own creativity by making sure to engage both sides of her brain as often as possible. Current passions include learning to speak a new language (French), and painting in watercolours.
Sue Keogh
A specialist in producing web content, Sue looks after the social media for TEDxGranta.
She’s worked for household names like the BBC, ITV, AOL, Yahoo! and Toshiba, and lots of small and interesting businesses too. She writes on digital and social for Media Week’s Wall Blog, runs workshops in writing for social media and has recently completed a graphic novel on entrepreneurship. Music and arts-loving with a fondness for all things Hispanic, Sue is fascinated by words, by communication and by the way that social media enables the spread of ideas between people who would never previously have connected.
Chris Massey
Chris comes from a background in Philosophy (with a dash of Psychology thrown in for good measure), and does great things with words in his day job. He saw his first TED video 3 years ago, and now can’t stop talking about them. He is enthralled with the power & growth of communities, their subtle interactions, and the ideas that spread through them. Whether this was as a result of his exposure to TED or why he loved the videos is a chicken & egg question. Current interests include figuring out how to fuse together technology events and game mechanics, and considering learning to play the guitar.
Jo Riches
Jo is a marketing, events and PR consultant and has worked in marketing for both agencies and directly with organisations for over 15 years. Her clients have spanned a range of industries ranging from local restaurants to organic farmers. She’s worked on a variety of projects ranging from new build trendy apartments to tree planting parties!
Jo really enjoys all the different projects she’s asked to work on. No two jobs are ever the same, making working life fun! She enjoys meeting and working with new clients and always eager to come up with the next great marketing plan.
She lives near Cambridge with her smashing husband, her two lovely children, and not forgetting her dog and cat!!
Zoë Rose
Zoë came to Cambridge from Australia six years ago, and hasn’t looked back since. A passion for education has taken her from online publishing for both academia and schools through to developing her own web app for university students, a project which she has put on hold in order to take up her current role as an information architect for learning content at the BBC.
Zoë is interested in how education can be made better from Kindergarten right through to Doctoral study, and how people interact with the machines that surround them. She is a keen advocate of teaching computing in schools, is enthusiastic about open access publishing, and is currently re-learning high school science in an effort to become a better cook.
