a few of our mentors

lollipop has recruited close to one hundred senior mentors from CEO’s, founders, coaches to media specialists. All have a minimum five years experience and are waiting in the wings to be paired with a lollipop mentee. 

We are honoured to have such a talented and willing bunch of mentors on our books. 

Count down to our pilot in September begins….

Ali Proctor-Walsh
Production Director

I’m an Executive Producer / Production Director with 15 years of cross agency experience. My work spans motion graphics, film and print but I specialise in bringing innovative, immersive experiences to life using cutting edge and immersive technologies…

to life using cutting edge and immersive technologies.

I have worked at agencies large and small and my career has spanned many aspects of production management, experiential and interactive giving me a unique insight into the integration of creative technology driven elements into more traditional agency environments. My career has includes stints at Facebook, Jack Morton, Framestore, Imagination, Nexus Studios, Hellicar & Lewis, Field.io and R/GA working with a wide range of brands across multiple sectors including Jaguar Land Rover, Google, Samsung, Shell, Ted Baker, IBM, Apple, Cartoon Network and many more. I’m passionate about creating lasting and meaningful relationships with every client I work with and creating an empowering and progressive environment for every team member I manage.

Ally Owen
Activist / Founder

Ally Owen founded Brixton Finishing School due to the need to create a diverse and equitable talent blueprint for our industry. By the end of 2020 230 talents from multicultural, socially mobile, neurodiverse (& majority female) backgrounds…

passed through this award-winning accelerator that finds, trains and places ‘under-represented’ talent in roles. Recognising the impact that COVID-19 will have on young people’s futures, Ally also launched the game-changing AD-Cademy program which will give over 2500 students a year across the UK a fairer chance to succeed. Allys’ accolades include Campaign 2021 Female Frontiers Championing Change Honouree/Campaign ‘Trailblazer’ 2020/ BIMA 2020 Champion for Change/ AD Age 2020 ‘Woman to watch in Europe’

Lauren Ogundeko
CDO & Co-Founder

Lauren is a digital specialist with many years experience across various channels and verticals.

A computer scientist by academic background, her experience covers deep leadership and practitioner expertise across all digital… i

in particular SEO, Biddable, Performance Content, Organic Social, Affiliates, Display, Martech & Web Analytics.

Lauren has helped small and large brands and businesses leverage digital media marketing from strategy-to-acquisition-to-measurement-and-retention and under her leadership, programmes have experienced growth upwards of more than 400% YoY return on investment.

Dino Myers-Lamptey
Founder

Dino is the Founder of The Barber Shop, a strategy-led creative company that aims to solve the biggest business problems through data, distribution and disruptive ideas. They work with businesses that are driven by….

a purpose and which strive to enrich culture through the pleasure that they bring. Their clients include Karma Drinks, Triumph, TikTok and Parkinson’s UK. Dino is Co-Chair of The Alliance of Independent Agencies, CAN (Conscious Advertising Network) and is also a board member of the UK Effies, Marketing Society and a NED for the Brixton Finishing School and a member of the Global Snap Creative Council. In 2020 Dino was recognised as a Top 10 Media Planner by Campaign. Dino is also a founding member of MEFA (Media For All), and has recently founded Diverse Speakers.

Career history: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinosaw/
Twitter: @thedinosaw

Johanne Penny
CEO and Founder

Johanne Penney is a senior executive leader who has proactively championed the equality, diversity and inclusiveness agenda throughout 20 years of working for a range of professional bodies. In 2020 she founded ‘Amp Up Your Voice’ an anti-racism consultancy, to focus solely on delivering high energy, unique training and education for the workforce…

Johanne mentors up to and including C-suite, Board level for organisations who authentically want to change the narrative and ensure equity for Black and Ethnically Diverse individuals. She is also a freelance culture writer for ‘Millennial Femme’ a social media platform dedicated to the empowerment of Black women. Her strongest ethos is #womensupportingwomen.

Jo Valentina -Sinclair
Business & Mindset Coach

Jo is a Life, Business/Mindset Coach & the founder of Create Your Own Story, a coaching service for smart, conscious women, empowering them with the confidence and the exact steps to start or grow their own coaching/consulting business online….

She worked for the BBC for 10 years in Editorial Strategy, but after falling out of love with her job, 6 years ago she left the corporate world to follow her purpose and retrained as a Lifecoach & NLP Practitioner.
Jo now writes for Thrive Global and has delivered corporate trainings for Google, Red Bull, The Wow Foundation & The Songwriting Academy.

Andrew Goldsmith
Commercial Consultant

I have worked in media sales for over 20 years and have been incredibly lucky to have represented iconic brands such as NME, Capital, Heart and the Guardian. In that time I have learned how different media platforms work together, including digital, audio, print, out-of-home and events…

I now work for an audio-first company, helping to devise and launch podcasts and help podcast creators realise their full potential. I am passionate about the future of the media industry, to make it as inclusive and diverse as it needs to be in order to truly reflect the society that it aims to represent. I am proud to be a NABS Fast Forward mentor, a member of the NABS 100 Club and mentor for Media Trust’s Hidden Talent programme.

 

Eleanor-Laurie
Founder and Coach

Mum of 2, founder of digital talent agency, Roome. Certified Coach and Reiki Master, part time hill walker/ kayaker , passion for helping people live their best lives, passion for self-care and self-belief…

A belief that this world is wonderful and for each individual to make their own.

Sam Finlay
Executive Coach

Following a 25 year commercial career within print and digital media, which culminated in holding the chief revenue officer position at TI Media, I now work as an Executive coach, NED, consultant and mentor…

By combining everything I learnt from my commercial leadership career I now work with senior leaders and their teams to help them be the best they can and achieve the goals they set for themselves.

Check out my Linkedin for more details.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-finlay-0b862515/

Amy Gaertner
Marketing Planning lead at O2

Amy is an award-winning senior marketer with 15 years of experience and a mission to help people and brands grow, in that order…

A leader of high-performing teams, Amy has worked with some of the best brands around the globe, delivering strategic and creative integrated campaigns.

Julia-Arenson
Head of Creative Operations -Specsavers

Julia joined Specsavers in September 2019 as Head of Creative Operations where she’s working with the senior leadership team to build a future-proofed in house agency. Prior to Specs, she was Head of Creative Production at VCCP Blue where she helped treble the agency in size and build integrated creative and production departments…

She’s worked on brands such as Kimberly Clark, Compare the Market, Molson Coors, Macmillan, Kellogg’s and HSBC. Julia has also held positions at JWT, Leo Burnett, a bakery, a law firm, a health clinic, a paper route, and various lemonade stands. She works in Guernsey, was born in Russia, grew up in Canada and lives in North London with her husband Alex and two kids.

Kelly Jacobson Collins Privacy Compliance & Data Protection Director

With more than 20 years of experience in advertising, media and technology at the biggest agencies and senior roles at Microsoft and the Guardian, Kelly has used her ability to simplify privacy to write for titles including New Digital Age…

and ExchangeWire and spoken at Programmatic Punch, ATS and for Quantcast.
Kelly is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals and holds a CIPP/E.

Vicky Foster Commercial Digital Leader - Strategist

Senior commercial digital leader, strategist & culture champion
Over 20 years digital experience ranging from working in an ad network, publisher, agency and approached directly to work on transformation projects…

I have built strong foundations across business strategy, leadership and team culture which are all central to my interest and expertise.

 

Marco Bertozzi
Ex Spotify VP EMEA , President Publicis Media

Marco Bertozzi has worked in the media industry for 20 years, he was an early founder of Publicis Groupe’s Digital operations in 2000, the founder of their Programmatic Trading desk AOD in 2010 and most recently ran all sales for Spotify across EMEA.

He is now running his own consultancy Bertozzi49.

Madeline McQueen
Founder and Executive coach

Madeline McQueen is a Forbes featured, outstanding Executive Coach, Trainer, Speaker and Host who empowers and encourages her clients to explore and reach their full potential.
She has over 15 years of experience in sales, customer service and business growth, building leading sales teams, securing contracts at the million-pound level and at one point selling the highest number of laptops in the UK for a leading IT company. Madeline knows the importance of sales, systems, processes and operations in building business success…

This, coupled with her innate ability to read and understand people has made her an ideal choice for training and coaching Corporate Leaders and Business Professionals, over the last 17 years.
Madeline is a TEDx Speaker and has reached thousands with her vivacious, humorous and down to earth honesty. She is a sought-after Conference Host, particularly within the tech industry where she has shared the stage with industry heavyweights such as Steve Wozniak, Garry Kasparov, John Romero to name a few.
Madeline is a published author of ‘Close That Sale | 7 Steps to Close the Sale and Make More Money’, ‘The Magic of Motivation’, and is a contributory author of ‘Letters To a Young Generation 2’. She, also, sat on the board of charity Hestia helping to launch the UK Say’s No More campaign and is currently a non-Executive board member of Do It Now Now Limited a Community Interest Company (CIC) committed to educate, equip and support Black entrepreneurs, charities and CIC’s to thrive.
Madeline’s clients include MC Saatchi, Ogilvy, Prezzi, O2 Telefonica, Sopra Steria, Twilio, Adobe, Salesforce, WeAreDevelopers, GoCardless, Havas, Police Scotland, NHS, Asos, Virgin Management, Investec to name a few.

Amelia Torode
Co-Founder the Fawnbreak Collective

Fascinated by brands, technology, culture and ideas, Amelia Torode is one of the UK’s best known strategic planners. Campaign magazine described her as a “trailblazer in the advertising industry, a brilliant strategic thinker and leader.”

She’s worked at agencies in the US and UK including Naked, OgilvyInteractive, VCCP and her most recent agency job was Chief Strategy Officer at TBWA\London. She launched strategy consultancy…

The Fawnbrake Collective, in 2017 and has worked around the world for brands such as Google, Carlsberg and many others.

Amelia has a mixed race background with Indian-German ancestry, and a mother who was one of the key drivers of the Black Power movement in the UK in the 1960s. She’s now married to a French husband so her children have even more diversity in their lives.