Author
Claire Bodanis
Claire is one of the UK’s leading authorities on corporate reporting, and the founder and director of Falcon Windsor, a specialist corporate communications and reporting agency.
Claire came to corporate reporting by way of four years at Cambridge, editing mediaeval texts and honing a love of language and a knack for translating incomprehensible jargon into modern, clear English – the perfect foundation for helping UK plc communicate well with words.
Having spent time at two of London’s largest corporate reporting agencies, Claire founded Falcon Windsor in 2004 and now works with some of the UK’s best known companies to deliver thoughtful, creatively excellent and meticulously accurate corporate communications.
Claire is the co-author of three books with The Dark Angels Collective – the world’s first collective novel, Keeping Mum, published in 2014; Established – Lessons from the World’s Oldest Companies, published in 2018; and On Writing, to which she contributed a chapter on corporate reporting, published in 2019. She is an Associate Partner of Dark Angels, a global network of trainers and writers whose philosophy is that business writing should be more human.
Contributors
Heather Atchison
Heather has spent the best part of 20 years helping organisations of all types hone their brand language, so that they reflect their culture and personality both in what they say about themselves and in how they say it. As creative director at two UK communications agencies and then as an independent strategist, trainer and writer, she’s created and rolled out brand voices for many well known companies and organisations. She believes that all company messaging should be engaging and on-brand, wherever it may be – corporate communications included. To that end, Heather has helped many Falcon Windsor clients tell their stories.
Mark Forsyth
Mark is the author of three books on the English language: The Etymologicon which was a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, The Horologicon and The Elements of Eloquence. He has also written The Unknown Unknown on the joy of bookshops, Christmas Cornucopia on the origins of festive traditions, and A Short History of Drunkenness. Mark’s books have been translated into more than 15 languages.
Adrian Hornsby
Adrian is an award-winning writer across a diverse portfolio of forms and interests, ranging from reporting and impact assessment to international development, urbanism, and hi-tech music theatre. His books include The Good Analyst (‘the Bible of social impact,’ COO, Big Society Capital) and The Chinese Dream (‘an absorbing encyclopaedic monster of a book,’ Icon); theatre includes As Big As The Sky (with Ai Weiwei, ‘an opera of striking invention,’ The Wire). His groundbreaking opera for binaural headphones, The Hearing, is due to premiere at the Holland Festival in 2021. Adrian works with Falcon Windsor on corporate reporting and other writing projects.
Neil Roberts
Neil began his communications career in 2000 when he joined the founding team at Investis, developing what was then a new digital approach to investor communications. He was a key member of the senior management team that took Investis from niche, IR-focused start-up to international digital agency, working with many UK and Europe plcs in many different sectors along the way. Neil joined Falcon Windsor in 2019 as the company’s first managing director.
Jay Sheth
Jay was formerly Head of Economics, Policy and Regulatory Affairs at Virgin Money. Whilst at Virgin Money, he co-led the company’s work on the HM Treasury Women in Finance (WIF) Review and subsequent HMT WIF Charter. Jay left Virgin Money in late 2019 to spend some travelling around Central Asia, indulging his great interest in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Before Virgin Money, he worked for the European Commission, the CBI and the Treasury Committee, and in the UK House of Parliament as a Senior Economist and Policy Specialist. This included a secondment to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS), where he was part of the team that drafted the final report of the Commission on culture and standards in banking. Jay is a trustee of Hackney Empire and a member of the advisory board of Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF).
Kerry Watson
Kerry has more than 15 years’ experience in the corporate governance field having worked as Company Secretary for FTSE companies in the engineering and energy sectors. As well as being heavily involved in corporate transactions including acquisitions and takeovers, Kerry is experienced in building and refining governance processes, and drafting as well as producing company annual reports in line with UK compliance and governance requirements. Kerry is a member of ICSA, The Chartered Governance Institute.