Stories that have the power to endure.

FOUNDER, CEO

Kim is a former US Army engineer officer, educated at Harvard Business School, MIT, and the US Military Academy at West Point. After her deployments in Afghanistan, she co-founded and led Rumi Spice as their CEO, employing over 4,000 Afghan women.

FOUNDER, CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Rosie is co-founder of Blanchard House and shapes the creative vision of the company. She sets our editorial agenda and leads our development team, developing distinctive content for AppleTV+, Wondery, Exactly Right Media, Audible and Google. Rosie is a highly experienced audio producer, editor and multimedia producer with 15 years of experience at the BBC. She led the team making one of the BBC’s pioneering podcasts for which she won a Radio Academy Award. Rosie has also produced The Economist’s flagship podcast, leaving in 2020 to create Blanchard House.

HEAD OF CONTENT

Laurence leads production and postproduction at Blanchard House. He’s the Executive Producer on all our shows and is engaged at every level of editorial and creative, shaping our storytelling and distinctive sound. Before joining the company, he helped to define audio documentary-making at the BBC for nearly 20 years. As a multi award-winning producer in the BBC’s Documentaries Unit, he earned a reputation for crafting stories in bold and exciting ways – as well as pushing boundaries in the use of music and sound. He’s a winner of the coveted Prix Italia, two awards from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, a Foreign Press Association Award and a Radio Academy Award.

HOST

Joe Nocera is a veteran journalist and podcaster. He has been a columnist with the New York Times, Bloomberg, Esquire and GQ. His 2019 podcast, The Shrink Next Door, won a Webby for best documentary podcast and was turned into a major TV series starring Paul Rudd and Will Ferreli. His hit podcast The Pirate of Prague was released in 2023. His latest book, The Big Fail, recounts America's failed response to the pandemic. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT

Duncan is an award-winning audio producer with nearly a decade’s experience in podcasts and public radio. He started his career on BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programmes; Today, the World at One and PM. Later he helped to develop and launch the BBC’s award-winning podcast Beyond Today. He joined the Economist as a senior producer on its daily news podcast, The Intelligence. In 2021 he launched the newspaper’s first stand-alone podcast series, The Jab, on the global vaccination campaign for covid-19.

HEAD OF RIGHTS

James has over fifteen years’ experience in trade publishing and has worked in Contracts and Business Affairs for 3 of the “Big 5” publishers in the UK, as well as freelancing for literary agencies and independents. In that time he has supported more than 30 market-leading imprints including Jonathan Cape, BBC Books, Macmillan Children’s Books, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline and Picador.

HEAD OF BRAND, MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Jess is a brand strategist and communications specialist with 10 years of experience applying her extensive knowledge of contemporary culture and trends in commercial settings. She’s worked with agencies including Ragged Edge, Design Studio, DLMDD, and Here Design, as well as directly with brands including Bombay Sapphire, Logitech, V&A, British Journal of Photography, Brighton Festival and Studio Voltaire. She’s also a musician and songwriter, represented by Domino Publishing.

HEAD OF SOUND & MUSIC

Daniel is a composer and sound designer who has worked on podcasts such as The Intelligence, Google Ventures’ Theory & Practice, London School of Economics, and TV including the BBC’s Cities: Nature’s New Wild and National Geographic’s Primal Survivor.

MANAGING PRODUCER

Amica is an award-winning audio producer. Previously at The Economist, she helped build their audio features team where she was most recently editor of Checks and Balance, a weekly podcast on American politics, history and society. Her feature Trapped in Iran was shortlisted for Podcast of the Year by the Foreign Press Association, and as lead producer of Money Talks, The Economist’s flagship business and finance series, she twice won gold at the British Podcast Awards. Amica also led a project with The Economist Education Foundation to enable children around the world to tell their stories through audio.

PRODUCER

Seren is a BAFTA nominated Welsh, Zimbabwean journalist shortlisted by the Radio Academy as one of their 30 Under 30 in 2020. Seren was one of the founding producers of the BBC’s Beyond Today podcast before going on to produce the award-winning Newscast and launching R1Xtra’s If You Don’t Know podcast. Seren also co-founded the Black Swimming Association (the BSA), a charity set up to encourage more people from African, Caribbean and Asian communities to engage in aquatics.

PRODUCER, PRESENTER

Becky is a multi award-winning journalist joining Blanchard House from the BBC, where she presented the Radio 4 documentary Profile and created, produced and presented one of the first podcasts for the BBC, “At Lunch with…” Her podcast series The Home Babies was awarded Gold at the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

PRODUCER

Emma Jane Kirby joins Blanchard House after nearly 30 years at the BBC as a multi award-winning foreign correspondent, documentary maker, story-liner and script editor. She won the International Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents for her reporting on the migration crisis and is the author of The Optician of Lampedusa, (Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature, Financial Times Political Books of the Year, and Waterstones Books of The Year). She’s represented by David Higham.

PRODUCER

Ben Crighton joins Blanchard House from the BBC, where he spent two decades as a journalist in Radio Current Affairs. He produced single documentaries and multipart series for Radio 4 and World Service, including Profile, Chinese Characters and both series of the hugely successful 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy which won Silver at the British Podcast Awards. Most recently he produced Bad Cops, a true crime podcast for the BBC World Service.

PRODUCER

Rebecca is an award-winning producer and creative lead with nearly two decades experience developing and producing content for the BBC. She’s produced content for the biggest mainstream audiences in the UK, with work that has covered music, popular culture, and our climate to religion, ethics and the hidden stories and voices that need to be heard. She’s an experienced Senior Broadcast Journalist having also worked across BBC news and current affairs and recently won the prize for Journalism at the 2023 Sandford St Martin Awards for Radio 4’s Beyond Belief - Putin’s Religious War.

DEPUTY HEAD OF SOUND & MUSIC

Louis is an experienced composer, musician and producer. He has written music for The Economist, Google, LSE, Aston Martin and many more. In addition to his commercial work he has worked in the charity sector, helping disadvantaged individuals find their voice.

LEAD SOUND DESIGNER

Volkan is a sound designer and field recordist who brings a wealth of experience in sound arts and broadcast audio. Previously he has worked with Bloomberg Television, Somethin’ Else, The Times and The Sunday Times. He has worked on podcasts such as Stories of Our Times, Thinking Straight, Out To Lunch with Jay Rayner, Katy Brand and Katherine Parkinson’s Women Like Us and The Penguin Podcast from Penguin Random House.

ASSISTANT AUDIO ENGINEER

As a freelance editor, Toby has produced contemporary classical music for Hyperion and Naxos record labels, as well as recitals for broadcast by Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. He was previously an arts administrator in schools and universities. He is a professional singer and won the Sheila Mossman Memorial Prize for piano in 2013.

CONSULTING PRODUCER

Shane is a award-winning playwright and audio producer. He began his career in film and TV production, and producing stand-up comedy tours, later working as a Live Events Producer at the David Lynch Foundation. In 2020 he created the fiction podcast, Human Enough. He currently holds positions as a Content Producer and Executive Business Partner for GV (fka Google Ventures), where he worked on the Blanchard House podcast, Theory and Practice. In 2021 Shane’s stage play, Rainfall The Band, won Best Short Play at the NY Theaterfestival, and was adapted into the short film of the same name.

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCHER & EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Having recently completed his English Literature and Philosophy degree, Tom joins Blanchard House as both a development researcher and executive assistant to the creative director. Throughout his time at university Tom worked as contributing writer and editor for Glasgow University publications GUM and The Glasgow Guardian, where his writing primarily focussed on queer storytelling, providing a platform for other creatives and wider social activism. After interning in the summer of 2023, he is delighted to rejoin the team.

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT & BOOKKEEPER

Rie completed his bachelor's degree in Accountancy at Notre Dame of Dadiangas University in 2019, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the university publication, The Voice. He was awarded as an Outstanding Campus Journalist in 2018 and was President of the Confederation of All Clubs and Organizations of NDDU and Outstanding Club Leader of the Year 2019.

Rie has more than 5 years of experience in Accounting, Bookkeeping, Finance, Virtual Assistance and Administrative Support that he is excited to bring to the Blanchard House team.