Venturian Media - Key Staff

Company Director Ross divides his time between Western Australia and the UK and is responsible for Asia Pacific relationship management and business development as well as managing global paid search campaigns. He has ten years of search marketing experience having previously founded one of the UK's first SEM agencies, Webgravity as well as business development roles at dealgroupmedia, Wizard Systems and Centaur Publishing. Having waved goodbye to the corporate world back in 2005, he set up Venturian Media Ltd with business partner Neil McDermott. When he's not poring over spreadsheets or hunting out the next opportunity he can be found experimenting with new facial hair styles.

Company Director Neil is Northampton through and through and even supports "the Cobblers" to prove it. He looks after Venturian Media website design and development as well as all of our UK relationship management. A lifelong entrepreneur, Neil started his own web design business straight from university where he honed his skills before teaming up with ex-football team mate and friend from school Ross to form Venturian Media. Neil is also the social side of Venturian and is always on the look-out for "networking opportunities"; particularly if they involve free beer, and er .. pretty much free anything! As a self confessed workaholic he sacrifices most weekends and evenings to the Venturian Media cause but when not at his laptop he'll probably be watching, playing or talking about football.

As the elder statesman of the team, Company Director Colin brings some much needed gravitas and over 25 years of business experience - which is why he's our Company Chairman. He held senior management roles at British Telecom including project management of BT's first internet self-service customer transactions, in the mid-to-late '90s, on their innovative BT.COM website and has always been an early adopter and promoter of new technologies. Colin is also Venturian Media's SEO guru and is responsible for positioning of our sites in organic listings as well as general administration and keeper of the company records at our registered offices in Northampton. He is also Neil's dad but we sometimes pretend he isn't in client meetings.

For a long time Company Director Martha was the sole female representative at Venturian Media and was actually employed mainly to dispel the rumours about us being a front for the misogynists. Her background is in media sales and marketing both online and offline. Having been the advertising manager for Conde Nast Traveller magazine in a previous life she now manages Venturian's growing portfolio of travel websites and advertiser partners within this sector as well as managing search marketing campaigns and copy writing. Martha is based in Asia which is not a co-incidence her being married to Ross, although she sometimes wishes she wasn't. She is definitely the poshest member of the team and also being a graduate of law handles our contract, legal and compliance administration.

As the third full time contributor to carry the name 'McDermott', Alister has big and distinguished boots to fill. Luckily he is never short of anything to say and has an inexhaustible stream of opinions and ideas across a plethora of topics which he scribes (and we edit) in to copy for our blogs, newsletters and online communities. His journalistic skills have seen him regularly published in several regional newspapers which he now applies to personalising our websites, researching topical issues for content and identifying opportunities to promote our clients using social media. Currently based in the UK, Ali will shortly be moving to South America where he will continue to fly the Venturian Media flag as our Brazilian representative combining his copy writing with his other talent for making music.

Kitty was born in Hong Kong where she worked as a journalist covering legal and financial news. In 2005, she came to the UK and earned a master degree in Translation Studies. Currently based in London, she is now a freelance translator completing projects for various UK government departments as well as banks and SME's. As a native Chinese speaker and a veteran journalist, she knows the China market well and is helping Venturian to localise English websites into both simplified and traditional Chinese. Kitty loves tennis, reading and cooking (her spicy aubergine and spare rib dishes are not bad at all!) and is a regular theatre and cinema goer.

Sharat was born and raised in Hong Kong where he gained his experience in roles as diverse as Label Manager for South East Asia at Mushroom Records, the now defunct recording arm of News Corporation. Eventually moving into finance as a Convertible Bonds Broker For Tradition Asia, the interdealer broking arm of Compagnie Financière Tradition, a world leader in the brokerage of financial products running the Asia Ex Japan desk for them out of Hong Kong. He now manages our Indian operations with a team of dedicated SEO specialists and web developers from the fastest growing IT hub in India 'Hyderabad (aka Cyberabad!). Sharat is also responsible for strategy and marketing for our activities within the Indian subcontinent and provides us with additional consultancy on the nuances of other Asian markets. He is a keen guitar player with somewhat dubious taste in music (unless you're a fan of Mudhoney and Jon Bon Jovi of course).

Chris is responsible for the design, creative and branding of Venturian Media web sites and is also fighting hard for the title of the companies best footballer! A graduate of Coventry school of Art and Design, Chris has worked for a number of large design agencies including Iceberg Marketing PLC who are one of the biggest creative marketing agencies outside of London. Chris joined Venturian Media to work from their UK office at the back end of 2007. Since joining he has managed the rebranding of many of our established sites, and is looking forward to future projects within the Asian market.

The fourth and final McDermott, Stuart is contracted to provide technical office based assistance which includes everything from reconfiguring computer network setups to hanging up new blinds! His finest moment for VM was helping to set up the company head office in Northampton, overseeing the office layout design and implementation, plus most importantly the build of the Venturian Media trophy cabinet!