I am a former PR Practitioner with experience of managing effective PR and media relations and perfecting communications strategies for commercial and voluntary sector organisations. For the last eight years I have worked as editor of Review, a monthly print and audio magazine for the national charity Blind Veterans UK. Skilled in identifying improvement methods and driving powerful communication programmes, I am is now seeking a new and challenging role in Kent or East Sussex, but not necessarily in communications, as I am very organised and am willing to consider a range of roles that include project management and personal or executive assistant roles.
My career on the Review magazine led me into the homes and lives of the members of Blind Veterans UK when speaking of their experiences at Dunkirk, D-Day, as FEPOWs used as forced labour on the railway, working at Blethchley Park on the Enigma and Lorenz Codes, their sorties with Bomber Command, POWs who escaped and tell of their return home, gaining a degree in their barbed wire university or of the long march. Women who served in the ATS, the WRENs or the WRAF speak of their lives during WWII.
Then today there are the young men who were blinded in Iraq and Afghanistan. For each of these people I write an article of their experiences for the magazine, making sure to do them justice to show their past lives and celebrate the success of their present lives ie that despite severe sight loss they learn how to send an email at the age of 92 or take up art. For the younger members of the charity I write of how they lost their sight, and the friends who didn’t return with them, and show their lives today as they retrain for a return to work, set up in business, row the Pacific or excel in using assistive technology. The magazine is a celebration of their lives and an archive for future generations.
As the Review dates back to July 1915, I have a partnership with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for their students to read the first hand accounts of the men blinded in that war and the women who taught them to learn how to be blind. I record and edit their accounts in my recording studio.