Sir Robert Fry

Chairman

Sir Robert is Chairman of Albany Associates. He is also involved in a number of board and advisory roles to companies in the security and banking sectors, in Europe, North America and the Middle East, having previously been EMEA Regional Vice President for Defense & Security at Hewlett-Packard.  Before business he enjoyed a full military career with posts that included Commandant General of the Royal Marines and Deputy Commanding General of coalition forces in Iraq.

Sir Robert is a visiting professor at Reading University and a visiting fellow at Oxford; he is also an occasional columnist for the European edition of the WSJ and for Forbes Magazine. He is a trustee of the charity Help for Heroes and the London based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute. He maintains his military links as Colonel, The Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

Lord Guy Black

Board Member

Lord Guy Black has an esteemed career in freedom of expression issues, serving as Executive Director of the Telegraph Media Group since 2005 and Director of the Press Complaints Commission for seven years.

He has been a Conservative Member of the House of Lords since July 2010 and was Director of Communications for the Conservative Party from 2003-2005.

Lord Black is currently Chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust, which seeks to promote and preserve media freedom throughout the Commonwealth.  He graduated from Cambridge with double first class honours from Cambridge.

Simon Haselock

Chief Operating Officer

Simon Haselock is co-founder and Director of Albany Associates and a pioneer in media intervention in countries emerging from violent conflict.

Following the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in late 1995 and throughout 1996 he was the NATO Spokesman in Sarajevo. He stayed on in Bosnia from 1997 until early 2000 as Deputy High Representative for Media Affairs in the Office of The High Representative responsible for the public presentation of policy and media reform.

As Temporary Media Commissioner in Kosovo in 2000 he began the process of building the professional, legal and ethical structures necessary for the independent media to flourish there. He then served as the Director of Public Information for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) from 2001 to spring 2003 when he went on to head the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Media Development and Regulatory Advisory Team in Iraq.

Since co-founding Albany he has directed projects in Kosovo, Darfur, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia. He is an Associate of the Program for Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCLMP) at Oxford University and served for 23 years in the Royal Marines attending the Royal Navy Staff College in 1986.

Dieter Loraine

Managing Director

Dieter Loraine is co-founder of Albany Associates. He has over 15 years experience of strategic communications, institution building and media and regulatory development. Prior to forming Albany he was Senior Consultant for Media Regulation with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Media Development and Regulation Advisory Team in Iraq. Between 2001 and 2003 he was Acting Deputy Director General and Director of Communications for the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) in Bosnia and Herzegovina – at the time, Europe’s newest converged regulator.

During his time with the CRA he also served as Special Adviser to the UK Press Complaints Commission. Dieter is credited with designing and establishing from scratch the Bosnian Press Council, the first of its kind in South East Europe.

Between 1998 and 2001 he held two senior positions as Director of Broadcast Licensing and Director of Public Affairs in the Independent Media and Broadcasting Commission in Sarajevo. Prior to working in the Balkans, Dieter ran a flourishing public relations company in the UK, following a very successful career in the Royal Marines, retiring in 1995 as Assistant Director of Public Relations for the Royal Marines in the UK Ministry of Defence.

Doug Griffin

Director

Doug Griffin is an expert in communications and media strategy, law and policy, particularly in conflict, post-conflict and transitional environments.

He is a lawyer with expertise in drafting important legal documents and assisting with the development of communications and media law and policy. He has significant experience communicating effectively with stakeholders, including the public, government officials and the international community, about key law and policy issues.

Examples of projects include drafting a media development strategy for Somalia with input from ministries, other stakeholders, the United Nations and UN agencies and donors; drafting key legislation and regulations concerning media and telecommunications in Iraq; training senior management of national regulators of broadcasting and communications and government officials; and providing comprehensive broadcast and other regulatory advice to communications regulators and government ministries in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to joining Albany, Doug was in private practice with an international law firm in New York, Moscow and Paris.

Paul Bell

Director of Business Development

Paul Bell is Director of Business Development. He specializes in the development of comprehensive communications campaigns and product in conflict and post-conflict zones. Before joining Albany he was Chief Executive and subsequently Deputy Chairman of London’s largest public relations group, Bell Pottinger.

Raised in South Africa, Bell is a graduate in History and Politics of the University of Cape Town. Working as a journalist, he observed and reported South Africa’s complex and turbulent transition from apartheid to democracy. During this time he held senior posts on several leading publications, and was a two-time winner of the Mondi Gold, South Africa’s leading award for magazine journalism. In the mid-1990s he served as Director of Communications for the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, helping deliver its historic first non-racial, democratic general election.

In 2000 he took up a post with Bell Pottinger, consulting to governments and political figures, work that has taken him to Botswana, Iraq, Latvia, Russia, Turkey, the United States and Yemen. He is well versed in Middle Eastern affairs, having built and led the largest, most sophisticated and longest-running communications operation of the Iraq conflict. This led to further specialized work across the Middle East. In 2008 he was appointed Chief Executive of Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières, the Group’s strategic and geopolitical communications agency. In 2010 he was appointed Chief Executive of the Bell Pottinger Group of 15 companies.

Bell is a Trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award for Young People, which operates in more than 120 countries offering youth development programmes to more than 700,000 new entrants around the world each year.

Jem Thomas

Associate Director of Training and Strategy

Jem had a successful career in the Royal Navy, specialising in intelligence and then media and public relations. During this time he developed considerable operational experience in communications, including the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and West Africa.

His recent years have seen him as the spokesperson for the EU in Bosnia-Hercegovina and as Chief Instructor at the UK MoD's Defence Media Operations Centre. Academically, he has Masters degrees in security studies and international relations and also a diploma in public relations. His experience and knowledge have resulted in his focus on public diplomacy, media relations, strategic communications, issue and crisis management, with a specific interest in communication aspects of foreign policy (national and intergovernmental) and post-conflict reconstruction.

He has specialised in training public affairs, instructing UN agencies, national governments and corporate clients. He is a communications consultant to the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit and Thomson Reuters.

Anna Staevska

Senior Associate

Anna is a Senior Associate in Albany Associates, currently responsible for the administration of donor funded projects in the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa; writing tender proposals; and identifying new business opportunities.

Anna developed and organised two very successful Master Classes in Broadcast Regulation in France and the UK where representatives of regulatory authorities from all over the world had the opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss broadcast regulation. Before joining Albany in 2007, Anna worked in the fund department of Standard Bank where she oversaw large investment projects.

Anna has a Masters Degree in International Trade, European Integration and Management from the University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic and Certificates in Financial Advice and Offshore Administration, obtained in the UK. Anna is a Czech national and speaks five languages.

Guy Gabriel

Senior Associate

Guy Gabriel is a Senior Associate with a particular responsibility for Sudan, a country he first visited a decade earlier and has been visiting ever since. He joined Albany in August 2010 to run a State Department-funded project that conducted outreach to the Arab and nomadic sections of Darfuri society.

Before joining, Gabriel spent 4 years with Arab Media Watch, a London-based organisation that monitors media coverage of the Middle East. Throughout his career, he has worked as a freelance journalist, with work appearing in various publications including al Hayat, al Quds al Arabi, The National (UAE), and Forbes (US), as well as a number of more specialised fora on Middle Eastern politics. In 2010 he was shortlisted for an International Media Council award for coverage of the Middle East.

Gabriel speaks French, Arabic (including script), and German, and holds a Masters from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Justin Marozzi

Senior Advisor

Justin Marozzi is a writer, historian and strategic communications advisor with extensive experience working in and writing about many of the world's most challenging countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Burma, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Lebanon and Syria.

In 2004, Justin established the world's first outreach programme operated by a security company in a conflict zone, a nationwide civil affairs programme that assisted the innocent victims of conflict. He was a senior communications advisor in Darfur, working with the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in 2008, and Mogadishu, where he has assisted the African Union mission.

In 2010 Justin was a senior advisor to the British government's Stabilisation Unit (SU) on strategic communications in the UK, Afghanistan, Haiti, Congo, Somalia and other crisis environments. The author of four books, he has written extensively about these overseas assignments for the FT, Times, Spectator and Standpoint, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. He holds UK government security clearance and is a member of the SU’s Civilian Stabilisation Group.

Luke Havill

Senior Associate

Luke Havill joined Albany in January 2013 as a Senior Associate.

Before joining, Havill spent 3 and half years with Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières, the strategic communications and geopolitical specialist within Bell Pottinger Private, London’s largest public relations group. During his time there he worked on international political and government communications accounts, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa. His work took him to Israel, Nigeria, Russia and Yemen, completing an eight-week secondment in the Middle East in 2011, and similar in West Africa in 2012. Havill also travelled to Moscow in 2011 as an official independent election observer at the Russian Parliamentary elections.

Havill holds a Masters in International Public Relations & Political Communication and a Bachelors in Classics from Cardiff University.

Joanne Smith

HR & Administration Manager

Jo Smith recently joined Albany Associates as Office Manager and covers all HR, Administration and Logistics operations for the company. Jo has a strong background of 16 years' experience in recruitment both in the UK and South Africa.

She most recently worked for a leading international recruitment company as head of the Marketing Recruitment Division.

Previous areas of experience include working within the corporate logistics industry for major international organisations.

Tina Kavadze

Marketing & Business Development Coordinator

Before joining Albany in 2011 Tina undertook an internship (2009-2011) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP, Stockholm, Sweden), where she was in charge of collecting and analysing political and economic data on Eastern Europe and Russia.

Furthermore, she played a key support role in editing and publishing an elaborate study of the Russo-Georgian War, entitled The Guns of August 2008, Russia's War in Georgia. While in Sweden Tina has also completed a Master’s Programme at Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden) with a specialisation in Eurasian Studies.

Her academic interest veers towards energy security with added emphasis on pipeline politics in Europe and Central Asia. She holds a BA degree in International Relations and Politics from University of Westminster (London) and she has completed her secondary education in College de Nicolas Bouvier (Geneva).

Marissa Moran

Media Development Coordinator

Marissa joined Albany in September 2011 to provide analytical research and business development in media development and regulation capacities.

She earned a Masters from The London School of Economics, in Media, Communications, and Development in 2012, for which her dissertation scrutinized the relationship between strategic narratives and personal narratives among Somali diaspora in London. She completed her Bachelor's in Political Communication and International Affairs, Peace and Conflict Studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 2010.

Her undergraduate thesis examined the role of media development projects in post-conflict Rwanda and Bosnia, emphasizing the need for media regulation and policy approaches in future post-conflict interventions. Past research projects include an assessment of international and local media coverage of conflicts in Darfur and the Gaza Strip.

From 2010-2011 she served in the U.S. community service network Americorps, coordinating secondary and post-secondary educational opportunities for low-income and immigrant youth. Previous positions include internships at Internews Network, GW's Global Media Institute, and the U.S. Senate. Originally from Connecticut in the U.S., Marissa's focus at Albany includes media development and regulation and new media policy issues in Africa and the Middle East.

Sir Kieran Prendergast

Board Member

Sir Kieran Prendergast is a British diplomat and a former Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs at the United Nations. He was appointed consul-general in Tel Aviv, Israel and later served as High Commissioner to Zimbabwe and Kenya, and then as Ambassador to Turkey.

In 1997, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Sir Kieran Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs at the United Nations and served in that position until 2005. He helped call attention to human rights violations and ethnic cleansing resulting from the War in Darfur, and was deeply involved in Cyprus reunification negotiations in 2004.  When he resigned in 2005, Kofi Annan thanked him for his “outstanding service” and “invaluable advice.” Since his resignation from the United Nations, Prendergast has conducted research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and is a member of the Advisory Council of Independent Diplomat. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva.