Statement: I Have Established a National Reputation As an Excep
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BONI SONES OBE CV: Email:[email protected] Skills and achievement: I have had a 38 year career in the field of media, government relations, and politics. I have an influential network of contacts with national journalists, and politicians of all parties. I have been at the forefront of the “convergence” agenda and on January 1st 2009 was awarded an OBE for “Services to Broadcasting and Government PR”. As a freelance political and public affairs editor I have developed a high profile portfolio career in politics, government policy making and the media and am proficient in a number of skills at a senior level. In June 2014 I was given the title of “Policy Associate” at the Centre for Business Research, Cambridge University. January 1999 to present: Director, ECS (Effective Communication Strategies) I run my own communications company ECS campaigning in government and politics advising Quangos, MPs, charities, and government bodies on high profile social action campaigns using media and new media, writing and delivering communication strategies, writing press releases, training, scripting Q and As, and feature articles. I have worked in- house for clients heading departments, marketing and communications teams and delivering public affairs strategies. From Jan 02 to July 03, I acted as Head of Public Affairs for the Lottery Distributor, Community Fund, crisis managing on many occasions. I have worked for a number of MPs, across party in Westminster. Since 2008 I have worked freelance broadcasting and writing for the exam Board, Cambridge Assessment, part of Cambridge University and seven other Cambridge University Departments in the field of business, innovation and economics. At The Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University I regularly edit its Blog Content and have secured audio interviews with leading academics turning them into articles for the National media. I am also working regularly with the Cambridge Service Alliance at the IfM. I have been six different correspondents for the media covering Nuclear Energy, Local Government, Home Affairs, Social Affairs, Education, and now Economics and Business too, four of these were directly “on-air” reporting live on TV and radio including BBC Radio 4 and BBC News 24. I have made documentaries for BBC2 on Education and Special Needs and outputted over 100 half hour programmes for the BBC being in charge of the Gallery and all the reporting staff and live link-ups. I have also recently conducted around 200 interviews with global business leaders and have gone on to work directly for some of them including the global advertising agency which Sir Martin Sorrell heads – WPP. I have travelled with WPP to China and over the past three years have scripted articles, books and podcast documentaries for “WPP The Store” on issues of global retail including “China’s Top 50 Brands”, and “The History of Retail”. I have also helped the government economist Vicky Pryce write her book “Greekonomics”, on the economic crisis in Europe and subsequently “Prisonomics”. My website www.bonisonesproductions.com has favourable testimonials, including from Harvard University. I was awarded a Research Associate status at SOAS, and in the early 1990s was Elected as a Fellow at the Department of Education at the University of East Anglia with Professor John Elliott when I worked as an Education Correspondent for the BBC. In 2008 I was nominated for a “Women in Public Policy” Award. I am now a Policy Associate at the Centre for Business Research, Cambridge University. Previous career in journalism: I am a trained BBC TV and Radio correspondent, a BBC TV political editor, was chosen to help set up BBC News 24, worked for BBC Radio 4 and have all the presentation skills, organisational skills, technical skills, financial skills and knowledge of media that this requires. I have overseen budgets of £1 million a year, line managed up to 20 staff and written performance appraisals. I am an experienced film and programme maker. I am a skilled presenter and interviewer. I have trained some of the young names on BBC TV today. Nov 1997 to Jan 99: BBC News 24. Senior Broadcast Journalist. April 1995 to Nov 1997: BBC Television East. Series Editor East at Westminster. 1993 to 1995: BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Senior Producer. 1991 to 1993: BBC TV East. Local Government and Education Correspondent. 1987 to 1991: BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Radio reporter and producer. 1985 to 1987: Cambridge Evening News. Assistant News Editor, Features Editor. 1982 to 1985: Cheltenham Source. News Reporter and Women's Page Editor. 1978 to 1982: News and Feature Reporter, East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Evening Star. 1975 to 1978: Trade Union Research officer for BIFU and then NALGO. Awards: In September 08 I was voted one of the 20 most influential women in Britain by Women in Public Policy Magazine. I was also nominated for the Dods Scottish Widows female political journalist of the year award 08. I have also been a nominee for the Channel 4 Political Awards in January 2008 and a nominee for the Orwell Prize in journalism in 2005 for my book and work with women politicians. I help judge the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Excellence Awards, Broadcasting. Education: 1971/73: 2:1 BA Hons, Public Administration, Leicester Polytechnic. Special positions: June 2014: Policy Associate, Centre for Business Research, Cambridge University. Autumn 2011: CISD Research Associate at Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, School of Oriental and African Studies, London Summer 03: Chosen and trained to be lay-member Home Office selection panels helping to recruit Chief Prison Officers, Chief Fire Officers and Chief Constables through the high potential development scheme. In 1993: I was Elected Education Fellow, University of East Anglia. Campaigns for others: My pro-bono campaigns include “Save the YPS in Cambridge, the Young Person’s Psychiatric Service” which led to questions in the House of Commons. I also initiated with friends the “Free the Cambridge Two” when charity workers running a homeless hostel where drugs were found were jailed, this subsequently led to the publication of the award winning book “Stuart A Life Backwards”, by Alex Masters. Another pro-bono campaign is my www.wpradio.co.uk for women, which set out to create a better profile for women in politics and encourage more women to enter parliament. I have assisted the Cambridge Summer Music Festival in its substantive fund-raising campaign, and have regularly achieved fund raising targets for newspaper and broadcast appeals, including hospital scanners, children's hospice targets, Christmas appeals for the young and the elderly and the BBC's Children in Need appeal locally in the East. All this requires relationship building skills. Hobbies: Writing: I have recently published four books of short stories of Suffolk in the 1950s - “The Mermaid’s Tale” and “Prequel to the Mermaid’s Tale” and a related short story series including “Food on the Table,” “Dear Alex”, “20 Poems for 2012”, “Love Travels Well in July”, “12 Stories of Christmas – 3 Sisters and an axe”. My short stories of Suffolk have appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times, on Anglia TV and talked about on BBC Radio Suffolk. www.wpradio.co.uk/books. I love storytelling and have fully trained voice skills to read my stories live. Family: I have three grown up children. I walk, read, bell ring and collect art. Achievements: At a Cabinet level I have worked for Ministers and MPs in Westminster on specific creative campaigns. Harriet Harman MP, Labour's Deputy Leader and The Home Secretary The Rt Hon Theresa May MP are supporters of my work with women in Parliament www.wpradio.co.uk and www.parliamentaryradio.com . I also advised Labour minister Vera Baird QC on press work for their Equalities Bill. I headed the press team for Chris Huhne in the Liberal Democrat first leadership race which won plaudits in the press, and have worked for Joan Ruddock MP and David Howarth MP. I have created BBC style podcast channels of communication through the web at a CEO level in Finance, Economics and Science for Cambridge University Judge Business School, Cambridge University Institute for Manufacturing Sciences, Cambridge University Engineering Department, and in Parliament, women in politics and government globally www.wpradio.co.uk. All have established high profile audiences. I broadcast and also make radio and TV documentaries for these channels interviewing the most senior people in business, economics, science and politics today. www.bonisonesproducitons.com has examples of my work. Mentoring: I have worked alongside some of the most successful young graduates and post graduates in government, politics and the media and the not-for-profit sector over the past 15 years. I have advised and guided them pro-bono through the first five years of their careers after leaving University, working one to one with them and answering their calls sometimes daily. I am committed to education of the young. Testimonials below. I have just completed a significant body of “collaborative” work over nine years charting women’s recent political history. I have written a new book “When There’s a Woman in the Room – Women MPs Shaping Public Policy, a follow up to “Women in Parliament: the New Suffragettes,” both are based on interviews with over 450 women MPs across all parties since 1997, some in government. I co-produced a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the first book called “A Monstrous Regiment” presented by Jackie Ashley - www.workingwomenproductions.co.uk. In August 2010 the British Library opened a historical audio archive of 82 interviews of women in politics from the book. The House of Commons Works of Art Committee purchased four photographic portraits of women MPs party by party which I studio produced and they now hang in the Upper Committee Corridor there.