Lisa Smosarski is the award-winning Editorial Director of Stylist. As well as engaging over 5 million women editorially through the magazine, website, social media and events each month, Lisa is a board director at The Stylist Group.

Lisa also writes Stylist’s career-focused How To Work column and companion email and hosts the Stylist Network event series. Prior to Stylist, Lisa edited more!, bliss and Smash Hits.

Sajeeda Merali joined the PPA as CEO in 2021, with an agenda to transform the way the PPA represents and supports its 300+ UK multi-media business members, consumer magazine publishers, business-to-business data and information providers, customer magazine publishers and smaller independents.

A strategic leader with 20 years’ experience in the publishing industry, Sajeeda has held senior positions with both B2B and consumer-facing organisations, with extensive experience in change management and strategy development.

She joined the PPA from the New Statesman Media Group, where she was Chief Revenue Officer responsible for identifying high-value digital opportunities and launching commercial strategy for new brands in highly competitive markets.

Abi Spooner is Strategy Partner at Atlas, specialising in customer behavioural data analysis, forecasting and strategic planning, alongside delivering specialist subscriptions marketing training.

Abi worked as Customer Strategy Officer at Dennis and Future, and Chief Customer Officer at Dennis, where she created profitable customer-first strategies to drive acquisition, efficiency and yield across The Week globally. She also launched and grew The Week Junior UK and US as well as driving strategy for over 120 brands.

A highly skilled data storyteller, Abi makes complex analysis accessible and understood, from the board room to marketing teams and the wider business. She is at her happiest creating LTV models and believes creativity really can (and probably should) start with a spreadsheet.

As Chief Executive Officer, Katie Vanneck-Smith has overall management responsibility for leading premium content and experience business, Hearst UK.

Katie has a wealth of experience innovating in the media industry, having worked for both large-scale corporations and more recently launching a successful startup.

Katie joined Hearst UK in December 2022 from Tortoise Media, a global media outlet that she co-founded in 2018. Prior to that, she was President and Chief Customer Officer of Dow Jones, where she helped build and lead The Wall Street Journal’s successful online membership-based business.

Katie has also held senior roles at The Telegraph Media Group and The Times. As Chief Marketing Officer at The Times, Katie led the architecture of the newspaper’s early move to paid digital subscriptions and was responsible for creating the UK’s first news membership brand, Times+. Katie also oversaw the company’s events programmes, including both The Wall Street Journal CEO Council and The Times CEO Summit.