George Dearsley (Avante Media Limited)

Avanté Media Ltd is an innovative communications company offering incisive media training and high quality corporate video production. We have recently trained senior executives from companies like United Utilities, IMG, the Co-operative Bank and We Buy Any Car dot Com. Please visit our new site www.avantemedia.posterous.com for video content. Recent video clients include Blue Arrow, Pets at Home and EasyFairs.  The company was formed 16 years ago but George Dearsley has been a media trainer and communications consultant since 1990. Our media training site is www.avantemedia.co.uk.  In the last year the company has also won a number of prestige contracts to deliver video content for blue chip clients, across a range of media platforms. These videos have been created by top filmmaker Gavin Hill, whose career has included stints with BBC, ITV, SKY, Paramount and APTV.

George has worked with a wide variety of clients including EU agencies like Europol and EMCDDA, many central government departments like the Highways Agency and the Coastguard Agency and blue chip companies like Shell, Kodak, FIFA, KPMG, Bank of New York, Co-operative Bank, BUPA, HBoS, Air Products, Earls Court & Olympia and Anglian Water. In addition, he has undertaken work via a number of public relations companies like Weber Shandwick, SKV, City Press and Golley Slater. His track record is particularly strong in financial services and construction.

In financial services he has worked with board level delegates from banks like Cedel, one of the two International Central Securities Depositories, running courses for the bank in London, Luxembourg and Brussels, the Co-operative Bank and Fairbairn Private Bank on the Isle of Man.

In construction the company has trained many chairmen of the Construction Confederation and the main board of the National Federation of Builders, as well as many individual companies.

George has undertaken presentation skills courses for a wide range of clients from the managing director and financial director of a data mining plc to the head of IT for BUPA. He also acted as the facilitator in a brainstorming session for Enterprise plc to help the chief executive to find a common company culture and vision for a business that had grown very rapidly by acquisition into a multi million pound turnover plc. He has worked with major companies like BUPA on key message development and has written the foreward to the annual report and accounts for a plc. George has contributed to a major DVD to inspire creative writing in schools.

I was born in East London but have spent most of my working life in the North. I was lucky enough to win an exhibition (a type of scholarship) to Oxford University and studied history at Oriel College. I always had an ambition to be a journalist and so joined Westminster Press after university, working in Whitley Bay and Darlington for nearly five years before joining the Daily Mail in Manchester in 1977. I moved to the Daily Star in 1978. But from 1986 to around 2002 I freelanced for almost every national title. I also worked for a year for SKY TV. In 1990 I became involved in media training and set up my own media training company in 1996. I have trained many high profile delegates including CEOs, and Gary Megson the football manager. Since 2002 I have done relatively little writing, concentrating instead on media consultancy and training.

In my spare time I enjoy running an open age amateur football club Mellor FC (see www.mellorfc.com) and also exploring Turkey and learning the Turkish language.