Who we are

Trustee

Narzra is a showbiz reporter for Express.co.uk and has written for NME, Time Out London, VICE, Cosmopolitan, Red, Women’s Health and more. Narzra is also a PressPad Alumni. We helped her gain experience in London during our 2018 pilot.

She studied MA Magazine Journalism at City, University of London and is interested in film, music and entertainment.

Trustee

Alex is a journalist for Witness History at the BBC World Service radio where he has worked as a reporter and producer. During his time at the BBC, he worked at Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service on secondment as Head of Radio and Music. He volunteered for a number of years making radio programmes for National Prison Radio, which is run by the Prison Radio Association. Alex was also one of the first PressPad hosts during the initial 2018 accommodation pilot.

Content and Programmes Director

Camille Dupont is a marketing communications professional with business and editorial knowledge and skills. She has worked with European Youth Press, the Council of Europe, The World Today, Routed Magazine and others. Since her graduation from Sciences Po Strasbourg, Camille has mainly worked for London-based creative agencies in training design, communications, advertising and branding ending up as an Account Director. She was also the Editor of The National Student, an independent national publication (print and digital) aimed at students that promoted and supported new voices.

Founder

Olivia is a freelance broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker, academic and social entrepreneur – as well as the founder of PressPad. She’s written for The Guardian, The Economist, TIME Magazine, Reuters, the BBC and others. The situation with unpaid internships was so bad when she started out that she calculated that a one-way ticket to Chile would be a more cost-effective option, AND help her learn Spanish. After time in South America, she went on to graduate from Columbia Journalism School, before being lucky enough to do a lot of paid internships and fellowships in the US with the likes of VICE News, AJ+, the BBC Washington bureau and The Wall Street Journal. Ironically it was one of only two unpaid internships she did at the BBC World Service that led to her current job now.

Job Title

Marcus Ryder is a leading figure in the efforts to increase diversity and representation in the UK media industry.

In March 2020 he launched the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity an independent body bringing academics and media professionals together to bring academic rigour to the practical implementation of diversity policies in the media industry.

In February 2020 he was made a Visiting Professor of Media Diversity at Birmingham City University.

He was instrumental in diversity being written into the BBC Charter for the first time and changing the public funding model of how the BBC funds UK “ethnic” press, broadening the eligibility of which publications could apply for public funding from just local papers to including publications targeting “ethnic” minorities.

He also coordinated the campaign for film and television “diversity tax breaks” to increase the representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people working in the film and television industry.

Marcus Ryder is currently based in Beijing as the executive producer of online media at Caixin Global, China’s leading financial publication.

Prior to that he was head of BBC Scotland Current Affairs Programmes for eight years, executive produced BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama, oversaw all of the BBC’s documentary content covering the Scottish Referendum in 2014 and launched a nightly news series.

A keen amateur runner, he has completed 20 marathons on every continent except Antarctica.