If you would like to nominate a colleague to be a judge, or to put yourself forward to join the jury, please email dareawards@prca.org.uk.
Nikki Davies
MPC
Nikki is the Managing Director of MPC. Having started at the company as an account executive, she has spent the last 10 years working through every position within the business gaining valuable on the ground experience of running tailored programmes of community and stakeholder engagement. Current clients including Homes England, Legal and General Investment Management and the Herts Growth Board. Nikki is also pioneering MPC’s products and services in the social value field.
Bron Eames
Bron Eames FCIPR MPRCA has over 40 years’ PR experience and is a champion of insightful, creative and effective communications and communicators.
Having held senior positions with many high profile agencies she is now an independent consultant working with in-house and consultancy teams as an advisor, trainer and practitioner.
Matt de Leon
Richmond & Towers
Managing Director at Richmond & Towers, a brand communications agency with a ‘no BS‘ approach to PR & Digital – and everything in between, Matt is an experienced brand communications strategist with almost 25 years’ industry experience.
He has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands including Coca-Cola, Estrella Damm, Ford, Diageo, Shell, Reebok, and Samsung, and has built a reputation for giving honest advice, challenging conventional thinking, and leading teams that deliver fantastic results.
Bethan Wicks
Cowshed Communications
For the past 20 years, Beth has developed and delivered many, national multi-channel campaigns for Wales.
Starting her career at Visit Wales Beth managed output for outdoor adventure sports including Mountain Biking Wales, Adventure Wales, Walking Wales and Cycling. Her campaigns not only had significant impact on the increase of domestic visitor and international visitor numbers, but also laid the pathway for long term investment in highly accessible and sustainable outdoor adventure attractions including Zip World and Surf Snowdonia. Culminating in Lonely Planet awarding Wales as the Best Adventure Destination on the planet.
Beth has also headed up the Digital Marketing team at Visit Wales, embedding digital content strategy and brand guidelines across the organisation and held positions at howies, the BBC and National Museum Wales.
As a Welsh speaking native, Beth’s passion to elevate Wales’ status as place to live, visit, learn and do business has led to her moving agency side to Cowshed to use her skills to affect change. At Cowshed, Beth is instrumental in defining the brand proposition for the Caerphilly 2035 place branding project and leads the curriculum reform strategy for Education in Wales.
Beth is a published author, international speaker and a mum to three boys.
Alexandra Neale
Antidote Communications
Alex is a seasoned PR professional and agency leader with 15 years’ experience advising disruptors and innovators on their communications strategies. An alumni of PR Week’s 30 Under 30, she leads Antidote Communications, a data-driven comms agency for B2B and corporate brands. Having spent her earlier career in the fast-paced world of technology working with the likes of Huawei, BlackBerry and LinkedIn, she now applies her expertise to clients across a range of different sectors including ecommerce, professional services and innovation. She is passionate about creating a people-first culture at Antidote and building an agency where people love to come to work.
Jane Ainsworth
WPR
Jane Ainsworth is managing director of the Birmingham-based integrated agency WPR. An experienced communications strategist, Jane was named in PR Week’s UK Power Book 2021, won Professional of the Year at the PRCA Dare Awards 2022, and has been delivering insight-led, results-driven campaigns for clients for more than 25 years.
Nicola McIntosh
North East LEP
Senior Communications Adviser at the North East LEP, Nicola McIntosh is an experienced strategic comms specialist, having worked in the industry for over 20 years. At the age of 28, Nicola was named PR Professional of the Year by the North East Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Today, her career has come full circle – having started out working on public relations for a local economic regeneration team, Nicola moved into tourism comms and then health and life sciences before her role at the North East LEP saw her return to her early love of economic development. In addition to leading on internal communications, she now works closely with the energy, innovation and investment teams to showcase the regional partnership initiatives that are helping to create more and better jobs for the people of the North East.
Kelly Pepworth
Kelly is Managing Director of award-winning agency Speed. Redefining PR in an age of earned reputation and earned trust, Speed is the largest PR agency in the South West helping its clients build brands and reputations, drive growth and inspire and engage.
An experienced communications specialist with over two decades of experience, she has worked across a myriad of sectors with market leaders and challenger brands from Grant Thornton, Virgin Media and Barclaycard to Nestlé, D S Smith, RAC and Aviva.
Her specialist skills include strategic communication consultancy, issues-based PR, ESG comms, influencer and stakeholder engagement, industry thought leadership and multi-channel content strategies. Kelly is passionate about the Power of PR to connect people and effect positive change.
She is South West Chair and a Fellow of the PRCA.
Colin Cather
Bottle PR
Colin is the ECD and co-owner at Bottle. He leads the Planning and Creative teams; improving insights, ideas and measurement for their Fame and Findability mission.
His 10 years at Bottle follow a zig-zaggy career trajectory from Army Officer, to Unilever, and then taking own start-up confectionery brand from Borough Market to national supermarket distribution. That’s why he loves to salute a sweet PR campaign that can outflank competitors and prove growth impact.
Paul Lucas
Fanclub
Paul is a Partner at Fanclub Group where he oversees creative strategy across Fanclub and Humankind Comms. He’s been in the industry long enough to have floated things down the Thames, hold dinners in the sky, commission a t-shirt and build something on Potters Field. He is looking forward to Chat GPT filling in his timesheets.
Ellen Durrant
Red Lion
Ellen is joint managing director of Red Lion, a consumer PR agency that launched in early 2020. Red Lion combines outstanding media relations with creative flair for start-ups, scale ups and challenger brands, and already has an impressive client list including Habitat, Campari Rare portfolio and wellness start-ups Monk and Joii. Ellen previously spent almost eight years at Hope&Glory where she headed up accounts including Airbnb, adidas and Virgin Active.
Jessica Davis
Resonance
Jessica is Deputy Managing Director at Resonance, a specialist B2B tech communications consultancy that’s built for the data economy. With over 12 years of PR experience across a range of B2B organisations within the technology, retail, finance, and healthcare sectors, she has worked with innovative start-ups, through to global blue-chip companies.
Nathalie Agnew
Muckle Media
Nathalie Agnew formed Muckle Media in 2012. A former Fleishman-Hillard and Porter Novelli senior international PR advisor, Nathalie is a chartered Fellow of the CIPR. Nathalie has led her team to win numerous awards in recent years, the most notable being the PRCA DARE Large Agency of the Year award in 2022 and CIPR Scotland PRide Outstanding PR Consultancy award in 2018. Nathalie specialises in working with brands to create impactful marketing programmes which meet business or organisational objectives, using creative approaches to ensure excellent ROI. Nathalie holds a BA in Communications and a certificate in Direct and E-Marketing from the IDM.
Chris Batchelor
Muckle Media
Chris has a background in consumer PR working on creative campaigns with agencies including PrettyGreen, The PHA group and Karmarama, for brands including Three Mobile, Vauxhall Motors and Disney. Chris joined Muckle Media in 2021, helping the agency win a number of awards including PRCA DARE Large Agency of the Year award in 2022. Chris has a passion for impactful creative campaigns that deliver against objectives.
Katrina Marshall
Katrina Marshall is a communications specialist and trained journalist. She’s on the PRCA’s Race Ethnicity and Equity board and lectures & writes about social justice; diversity & inclusion and the intersect between race, gender and sexuality.
Katrina works in communications for an NHS Community Trust and loves fast horses, hot curries and fine wine.”
