With a very eclectic career in the television and film industry Anna has found her niche in animation. Anna has been a freelance editor, sound designer, camera operator and director. She has had the opportunity of working with directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Sidney Lumet. Principal areas of activity have been TV, including dramas, comedy and documentaries.

Anna has concentrated on wild life documentaries, travelling extensively filming gorillas, Livingston fruit bats, great whites and whale sharks. She has a BAFTA nomination for her work on Beyond The Clouds, a seven part series for Channel 4.

As a keen advocate in promoting women in technical positions Anna is an active BFI academy mentor. She is delighted to be involved with the setup of Animated Women UK and is looking to forward to a new venture concerning South American animation.

Debra is an ICF accredited Business and Personal Coach with a proven background in leadership, coaching and mentoring within VFX.

Debra has enjoyed a 25 year career in the Visual Effects Industry, progressing from Runner at Cinesite to Global Head of Compositing at DNEG, compositing on 25+ films and closely overseeing delivery of 100+ projects by hundreds of artists. Along the way, she has been involved with winning 3 Oscars and 3 BAFTAs, worked overseas, been a British Arrows judge, is a proud parent and a vocal advocate for women in VFX/Anim/tech.

With Open Frame Coaching, Debra is delighted to pool her strengths and experience to provide coaching and facilitation for individuals and companies within VFX and Animation.

Debra Wootton founded Webra Multimedia Ltd in 2007 whilst at University, establishing the business at Pinewood Studios in 2008 going on to graduate as a digital animation specialist in 2009 when she was then invited to sit on the board on Alumni for UWL in January 2010.

As well as her philanthropic activities Debra has also gone on to built up a portfolio of businesses; joining Terry Ackland-snow at FDI (Art Direction Training) in 2009 and establishing Webra as a group with Webra Productions, Webra Training and Webra Events joining Webra Multimedia Ltd in 2013.

Helen Piercy is a multidisciplinary filmmaker, award winning children’s author and professional educator. With degrees in Graphic Design (BA Hons) and Animation Direction (MA-The National Film and Television School) Helen began her career working as a freelance animator in London before launching her own business as a filmmaking educator in 2012.
 
Her passion for supporting young people led her to become a student mentor for Central Saint Martins MA Character Animation Course. In 2016, she joined the BA (Hons) Animation Course at Norwich University of the Arts as a full-time lecturer. Helen completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 2017 and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Louise is an Executive VFX Producer at ILM.  She began her career in TV Post and then into CG Animation. This led to Rushes where she was a VFX Producer for the Film & TV VFX department and in 2013, moved to Double Negative as part of the Senior team that set up the DNEGTV VFX division.

She was Executive Producer for the VFX teams on the BAFTA award-winning 'Metalhead' and Emmy Nominated 'Altered Carbon' and left in June 2018 to move to ILM.

Over the years, a desire to help develop new talent led Louise to the Creative Skillset Animation Council, and she is now on the BAFTA Learning and New Talent Committee, which supports new talent and education initiatives.

Lucy began her career at Scottish Television before a move to London and the world of post production. Her 20 years of experience spans a variety of creative companies across broadcast, film and television post production and physical special effects.  In 2008, she joined VFX software vendor The Foundry, where she spent 8 years as a key member of the team that grew the company from 30 passionate people and £4.6M turnover into a 330+ strong company with a valuation of £200M.

Lucy's passion to engage with the issues facing women in the industry was ignited when she attended Cranfield School of Management’s ‘Women as Leaders’ course, which provided real insight into the realities facing women and challenged attendees to play an active role in instigating change.  Now Managing Director at Union VFX, Lucy leads a great team of Marketing volunteers at AWUK.

Rosemary is a dual qualified English and Canadian lawyer who has worked both in-house and in private practice since 1990 advising various media companies on production, distribution, exploitation and protection issues.

She has developed a specialty in structuring and advising on international treaty coproductions. Previous to her life in the law she was a stage manager and company manager at the Stratford Festival and various regional theatre companies in Canada.

Rosemary is the Director of Television at London's Industry Media Business Affairs consultancy where she advises independent television producers and creators and distributors of all genres of content on their production and media exploitation issues and contracts.