Lily Ames: Private Session (60 mins)

Lily Ames is Head of Production at the UK-based podcast agency Chalk & Blade. As a Canadian, her career began at CBC radio, she then made the move to London in 2014 where she freelanced for The Guardian, Vice, Pacific Content, and Monocle Radio. In between those big names, she also had to take on a lot of low paid grunt work, was perennially in between job interviews, always seemed to be stuck in a pitch limbo and was told she could never work in the UK podcast industry because she didn’t have BBC Radio on her CV. This journey led her to set up the UK Audio Network (UKAN) in 2017, an email listserv inspired by those in the US which promotes open job call-outs, pay transparency, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Now with over 2,000 members, UKAN helps to tackle industry gatekeeping, creates a culture of pay transparency, and is at the forefront of recruiting during the UK podcast boom. Lily works across most facets of podcasting from development, strategy, client-facing relationships, recruitment, and production. She’s particularly interested in the format, trend and talent forecasting, and podcasting for young audiences. Big likes are: comedy, TikTok, genre-bending, and story hooks.