Watershed has an unusually wide range of expertise. Team members work together across all the accounts according to experience and expertise. Click on the individual photographs below to find out more about each person’s background and knowledge.
All our team pictured below are staff members – we rarely use freelancers. We aim to build long-term relationships with our clients and offer the stability of working with a dedicated team that gets to know your business inside out.
Sara is a former national journalist and seasoned PR professional who has worked on The Observer, The Sunday Times Insight Team, the TLS, The Guardian and BBC radio and TV. Her most unusual assignment was interviewing the King of Swaziland for regional TV when he visited Sherborne International School.
Sara has worked in PR at a senior level for nearly 14 years and oversees all the accounts at Watershed. A member of the Society of Authors, she has written several books, including Victorian Theatricals about aspects of popular 19th-century theatre, and Islomania, about the enchanting lure of islands. She is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and has an NCTJ National Certificate in Journalism.
Jonathan worked for the BBC for 13 years in radio and TV. He was a researcher, reporter, and bulletin producer, then one of the country’s first BBC video journalists, winning a Royal Television Society current affairs award. He has also worked for newspapers, magazines and websites and has an NCTJ National Certificate in Journalism.
Before entering PR he edited an original-spelling selection of the plays and poems of George Chapman (1559?-1634) for Penguin. Later, he ran the small South West publishing company Agre Books. Titles included Dorset Man, Dorset Women, and The Cornish Pasty. He now runs Watershed’s hyper-local news site Real West Dorset.
Alicen’s smart, funny, consumer-friendly copy grabs attention for all the right reasons. Originally from a big agency background, she has huge experience in consumer accounts of all kinds. Her time on a series of household name accounts taught her the correct pronunciation of Anusol and how to put the sizzle into British Meat. Soon after joining Watershed she researched and wrote an informative guide for allotment holders in West Dorset. This involved working with five main stakeholders, including English Nature and West Dorset District Council.
She handles PR for Plankbridge, makers of the best shepherds’ huts, promotes Dorset Coastal Cottages to the national travel press and worked with Weymouth College on the Olympic Ambassadors programme for London 2012.
Emily joined Watershed after an award-studded career in journalism. During her eight years as a hack, assignments included going undercover with homeless people in a gay village, staking out Gordon Brown’s house while he was Prime Minister and breaking world exclusives sitting in the foreign editor’s chair at The Scotsman.
Making the jump into PR, she left Scotland to join West Dorset District Council’s communications team where she supported the needs of 20 local and national journalists on the night of the 2010 General Election, in one of the most closely watched seats in the country.
She’s an early adopter of social media and uses her knowledge to the full as our social media executive.
Stephen is Watershed’s digital whizzkid. A recent graphic design graduate, he has a wide range of expertise in website design and production, graphic design and print, photography and video work.
He worked with the Town Mill Bakery in Lyme Regis to create a series of online videos as an aide-mémoire for staff setting up a new branch at the Eden Project in Cornwall. He’s even designed websites for celebrity-endorsed iPhone applications, including fashion designer David Gandy and TV host Chris Tarrant.
Current projects include providing the graphic design for an upcoming animation festival and competition called The Patchwork Project.
Stephen has a number of WordPress sites, a Flickr account, and numerous active Twitter accounts. He’s constantly searching the internet for sources of inspiration.
