After reading History of Art and English at Bristol university, I joined Conde Nast on the graduate scheme. Here, I realised my dream to become a travel and ski writer. One day. But first, I wanted to "cut my news teeth", working as a local newspaper reporter (NTCJ trained).
WOMEN'S EDITOR
Two years later, I stepped into women's magazines on fortnightly Real Magazine (1 million readership). I was a national magazine writer, then senior features writer, then section editor.
In 2005, I was awarded PTC New Journalist of the Year for "insightful investigative reporting", "sparkling writing" and "sheer hard work".
Later I joined EMAP, working on the features desk of Closer! then as acting features director on More! (weekly readership 1.8 million).
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Highlights have included interviewing Dame Emma Thompson (on Nanny McPhee), Sir Richard Branson (on entrepreneurship) and Chemmy Alcott (on ski racing). And being invited to Cannes Film Festival to interview Eva Longoria and Claudia Schiffer.
Another includes having my Closer! report on underage tanning-bed mis-use read out in Parliament, that helped prompt The Sunbeds Regulation Act 2010 come into play on 8 April 2011, making it illegal for U18 to use sun beds.
Lowlights? I couldn't go to Cannes, so sent a writer; that's the reality of editing.
TRAVEL & SKI WRITING
It has been an eventful journey since scooping local newspaper front page exclusives reporting on midnight anti-TB-badger-cull rallies and surviving another deathly council meeting - as almost the only woman in a newsroom of 15 hungry reporters.
Who knew then that a work day might entail powder-skiing with Olympian Jenny Jones, kitesurfing in Mauritius, elephant conservation in Zambia, kayaking on the Zambezi, waterskiing on Lake Malawi, hot-air ballooning in Marrakech or skiing Mont Blanc?
WHAT I DO, AND WHY
Over the years, I have met many a person who has moved my world - whose story deserves to be told. That, and rising to the challenge of the commission, is the thrill of the job.
"Travelling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller." Ibn Battuta
Murren, Switzerland, aged three.
Lesvos, Greece: the life jackets eerily spell "safe passage".
Lesvos Refugee Camp, Greece.
North Pole, 2010.
Katundu, a social impact handcraft interiors studio on Likoma Island, Malawi.
