The Team - a selection

Jill Cochrane

MD and founder member of The Vertex Group, Jill Cochrane, has worked extensively in Radio and Television in the United Kingdom since 1976. She won the Gold Award at the New York International Television and Film Festival and the Sandford St Martin Award for Radio. Her fifty half-hour interviews on Channel Four include: Lord Carrington, Denis Healey, Robert Maxwell, Jonathan Miller, Sir Peter Hall and Bishop Trevor Huddleston. She was chosen by the ITV Network to conduct the only half hour interview with the Prime Minister of India (at the time), Mrs Gandhi, on her last visit to Britain. In addition to continuing her work as a film maker, she has been teaching media and presentation skills since the early '80s.

A selection of further trainers are available at specific request.

Su Ingle

Su is an established member of the Vertex Training team, and for the past 15 years has carried out media training and crisis management courses with a wide range of blue chip companies UK and Global. She has trained senior members of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and institutions varying from accountants, consultants to local health authorities and pharmaceutical companies. She trained the top Executives and their scientists at the Imperial Cancer Trust and the Medical Research Council. Previously she presented Tomorrows World and Science in Action at the BBC and environmental programmes for ITV, BBC and TV New Zealand.

Fred Harris

Fred, a regular presenter of BBC Television and radio programmes, also makes programmes for Yorkshire Television, Central and Carlton, specialising in Maths, Science and Education. He has presented the Faraday Lectures and is also a writer/screenwriter. He has been training for The Group since it began.

Clive Lawrence

Ex programme organiser and deputy manager at Radio Kent for the BBC and an extremely capable trainer in both radio and television techniques as well as print journalism skills, Clive is a journalist with more than twenty-five years experience in print, television and radio at local, regional and national levels in the UK, working as reporter, news editor and senior manager. He broke the Watergate story in the UK and went on to serve as a News Editor with major radio stations.

He is an experienced trainer and has worked with Vertex, contributing both training and strategy for the past 10 years. He instinctively knows how to make his session both practical and fun, with a great learning outcome.

Gill Pyrah

Gill Pyrah is an experienced radio, television and print journalist, recognized for her extensive work on national radio and television in the UK. She presented The World this Week and worked on “Medicine Today” for two years. She had her own ‘Pyrah Programme’ and, this summer, presented an interview series on national BBC Radio She brings her insider’s understanding of the UK media to her parallel career as a media and presentation skills tutor. Gill has worked with Vertex for a number of years. Her training covers pharmaceutical, financial and other blue-chip businesses as well as health authorities, government agencies, arts organisations and numerous major charities. She has a degree in psychology and has written for newspapers and journals ranging from The Daily Telegraph to Cosmopolitan. She has been a judge of both the Whitbread Book of the Year and Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards. She has been a member of the Vertex training team for the past 7 years.

Tom Maddocks

Tom Maddocks is a freelance financial journalist and broadcaster, working in TV, radio and the national press. Recent experience includes a five-year stint as a reporter on BBC2s 'The Money Programme'. He was City correspondent for Channel 4s 'Business Programme' and 'Business Daily', concentrating particularly on City and financial stories. He writes for 'The Times', 'Mail on Sunday', 'the Independent on Sunday', 'Investors Chronicle', 'Tatler' and 'Business' magazines.