Amnesty Int.

I have the pleasure of managing a remarkably talented team of  media planners alongside data, content, social research and digital specialists as the Managing Director of Spark Foundry, Ireland. I am a frequent guest lecturer in Trinity College Ireland, Dublin Institute of Technology and Dublin Business School on psychology, business, marketing, media planning, digital planning and human behaviour. I currently hold a Board position in Core and, in the past, held a Board position in Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (2014 and 2015). I have been a judge at international media festivals such as the Effies and Festival of Global Media. I have worked and work with global and Irish iconic brands such as Mondelez, Volkswagen, Irish Times and Procter & Gamble. The work I have led and co-created with my partners has won over forty different awards on best use of media, advertising effectiveness and creativity in media Academic Jurors.

Monique Gerritsen holds a Masters in Economic Sciences from the Catholic University of Louvain (KUL). She started her career in 1981 at the J. Walter Thompson communications agency. For 20 years she worked as Client Services Director and as a member of the Management team in several international communications agencies (JWT, Grey Worldwide, McCann Erickson and Young & Rubicam) and managed clients in different sectors on a national and an international level. Guest lecturer at the EPHEC since 1999, she started to teach in 2002 and helped to found the communication option in the Haute Ecole EPHEC’s Marketing section. Representing Ephec she is an edcom Research Committee and Board member. Mrs. Gerritsen has also a 8 years’ experience in direct search & recruitment and is since 2011 Co-President and Coordinator of the Belgian Commercial Film Producers Association and she also works as an HR consultant at HC Consulting (office), is a freelance communication consultant and has been a member of the EFFIE Awards’ Organisation Committee for 17 years.

Sieglinde Martin graduated at the Vienna University of Economics with her prize winning thesis on “Education and Further Education at Universities”. She visited continuous further education in the field of business leadership, marketing and communications, e.g. at the Kellogg University, Chicago and University of Peddington, UK. In addition she is trained as systemic coach and NLP practitioner. Sieglinde Martin is Head of the Institute for Communication, Marketing & Sales at the FHWien – University of Applied Sciences of WKW in Vienna. Further she was the Academic Head of the Program “Professional in Advertising”, a cooperation project between the Werbe Akademie & FHWien of WKW (2007-2010) and Head of the Academic Board (2008-2012). Previous to her academic functions, Martin worked for nearly 20 years in various leading marketing and sales management positions in international companies, such as Microsoft, Xerox, Mondi Business Paper and Philips. She launched several international marketing projects and advertising campaigns on an integrated approach and gained a lot of intercultural experiences.

Barry has nearly 20 years of communications and advertising experience having worked at New PHD, Capital Radio (Global Radio), OMD, Gamesys, MediaCom and Carat. He is rare in that he has worked on all three sides of the communications industry; he has been a client, a planner and has also worked on the media owner side. As such he has a full perspective of how the industry operates. As you would expect he has worked on hundreds of campaigns for dozens of clients. He has significant experience of both implementation and strategic communications planning but has a specific interest in the psychology of planning, and so any brief with a behaviour change requirement is greeted with a warm smile. He is married with two children and certainly qualifies as a ‘fun’ Dad – “I’m not sure who is more grown up, them or me”. He is a strategy games nut and peers consider him to be an expert at Chess, Backgammon and Poker.

When he was a student at FH Wien, Istvan and his team were one of the Finalists teams of the Ad Venture Students Competition 2008. In the beginning of his working career he was a Senior Account Manager at DDB Vienna. After that, he had a two years’ experience as a Creative Strategist and Creative Concepter at Vice Austria. Nowadays, Istvan is the Co-Founder and Creative Director at Mama said no® working with big clients like Alfa Romeo and Stiegl. He is very excited to see the finalists of this year’s competition and to give his valuable insights and advice on their work.

Director of Campaigns

Emily Nevins has spent over a decade with Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, serving as Global Campaigns Director since 2012. She steers the organization’s global campaigns agenda (currently I Welcome, focused on refugee rights, and Brave, focused on protecting human rights defenders), as well as previous campaigns to end Torture and to protect Sexual and Reproductive Rights. She also oversees Amnesty’s Individuals at Risk campaigns, Digital Campaigns, Youth Engagement, Activism and Rapid Response Campaigns. Prior to Amnesty, she worked with Friends of the Earth and at a London-based race equality organization. Emily holds a Masters Degree in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Westminster, London, and a BA Music from DePaul University, Chicago.

Communications Director, Austria.

Many years’ experience in steering, implementing and developing international advocacy and communication initiatives and campaigns in the field of Human Rights – working for global NGOs and movements such as Amnesty International, SOS Children’s Villages and Clean Clothes Campaign.
Strategic Communications Adviser for international positioning, advocacy and fundraising initiatives.
International capacity building for advocacy experts Africa, Latin America, Eastern & Western Europe on strategic communication and campaigning.