More about mentors:

Lucy Banks, Executive Creative Director, Bauer Media

Lucy Banks joined Bauer UK in 2011 as Executive Creative Director, with a hybrid editorial/commercial remit across the whole multi-platform portfolio, including some of of Britain’s best loved brands - Grazia, Kiss, 4Music, Empire, Absolute Radio, heat, etc. Lucy works directly  with their award winning editors, producers, programmers and talent on cultural content ideas that are both interesting to audiences and effective for clients – such as www.gothingbig.co.uk. In 2015, Lucy led the launch of Adventure – a Cultural Creative Agency ‘start-in’. Their objective is to create work that has a deeper cultural resonance, truly embedding Bauer’s editorial talent into the process of making advertising and content, alongside a new and expert team of ad creatives. This work can be supercharged in Bauer’s famous brands to engage with their 22 million consumers, or used outside the portfolio.

Previously on the agency side, Lucy was Creative Director at Initiative Media, before joining ZenithOptimedia in 2004 as their Executive Creative Director, with a position on the UK Executive Board, aged just 28 (and the only female).

In her role at ZenithOptimedia, she established 'OPEN' as the agency's planning philosophy, and helped move the agency brand into a more creative space, developing a culture of idea generation and driving the creative product on a range of successful new business pitches.

Lucy is obsessed by brilliant content, and equally fascinated by ever-evolving distribution models. Despite the pace of change, she believes the old adage from Howard Gossage, 50s ‘Mad Man’, still rings true – that ‘Nobody reads ads. They read what interests them – sometimes it’s an ad”. She is interested in what interests an audience. Lucy is a founding member of the Marketing Technology Association ( http://www.themta.org ) and a regular speaker/contributor for LadyGeek (http://ladygeek.com), and has enjoyed being a tutor and judge at the Brighton Media Course over the years.

In addition to her 17+ years creative/media experience, Lucy also owns a successful Vintage Jewellery business, www.violetvintagejewellery.com , as featured by The Sunday Times as ‘One to Worship’, amongst others.

Lucy lives in Queen’s Park with her husband Adam, two daughters, Betty and Violet, and the world’s friendliest dog, Mr Brown.

Duan Evans, International Executive Creative Director, AKQA

Duan Evans is a leading industry creative talent with over sixteen years’ experience. Since joining AKQA in 2000, he has worked across a diverse range of clients including Xbox, Nissan and Nike on projects that range from pure interface design (Xbox 360) to global brand activations (Nike 'The Chance' and Nike Basketball ‘RISE’) to local events powered through social media (Nissan LEAF 'Taxis').

In the process, he has won a multitude of international awards and helped build a passionate creative team that is focused on delivering world firsts through creativity and innovation.  Based in AKQA’s London office, Duan is also responsible for overseeing all creative work across the company’s Portland, Shanghai, São Paulo and Tokyo locations.