Artistes of the Month

Barbara Cassani

Barbara Cassani founded the low cost airline Go and spearheaded the successful London 2012 Olympic bid. Currently, she is working on developing new business ventures - both start-ups and existing companies in the travel and leisure sectors.

She started her career in management consulting then worked in a wide variety of roles at British Airways. In 1997, Barbara started-up Go, the low-cost airline, with a £25m investment from British Airways and guided the airline to profits in less than 3 years as its CEO. The airline grew rapidly with turnover of £16m in 1998 and £230m in 2002. In 2001, she headed a £110m management buyout and a year later Go was sold to easyJet for £374m. In 2002, she was named Veuve Clicquot UK Business Woman of the Year and was voted UK Entrepreneur of the Year among readers of top UK broadsheet newspaper.

In June 2003, Barbara was appointed Chairman of London's 2012 Olympic Bid, building the team from scratch and overseeing the bid winning finalist status, she then served as Vice Chairman from mid 2004 until the bid was won in July 2005.

In 2003 Barbara co-wrote the best selling book, "Go - An Airline Adventure." Readers voted it the WH Smith Best Business Book in 2004.

Outside of work, Barbara is an amateur rider and a supporter of three-day eventing - owning several competition horses and sits on the Board of the Event Horse Owners Association.

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Jeffrey Robinson

Jeffrey Robinson is the international best-selling American author of 20 books, a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows on both sides of the Atlantic, and the 1990 winner of the Benedictine After-Dinner Speaker of the Year Award.

A native New Yorker, and with more than 600 published credits to his name Jeffrey moved to England in 1982 to concentrate on writing books. In The Risk Takers, his first UK best-seller, Robinson portrayed the high-flyers of the City and recounted their tales of money, ego and power. He followed that with the off-beat sequel, The Minus Millionaires, in which he told stories about "risk takers" who'd lost fortunes.

Robinson's international reputation was greatly enhanced by his investigative tour de force, The Laundrymen - Inside The World's Third Largest Business. In it, he uncovered the true extent of global money laundering and showed how hundreds of billions of dirty dollars are derived mainly from the drug trade, then reinvested throughout the world by otherwise legitimate businessmen, lawyers, accountants and bankers. The book, heralded by Business Week as, "An indictment of governments and banks," was a headline-maker in 14 countries around the world and the subject of two major television shows, both hosted by Robinson.

His expertise on worldwide fraud and money laundering has made him a much sort after commentator by the media. Some of the issues he discusses include the effect of the Single European Currency, and the threat of money laundering to finance terrorist activity such as the September 11 atrocities.

His next work was Prescription Games, an investigative study in the mould of The Laundrymen and The Merger, whihc looked in-depth at one of the most politically powerful industries on the planet: Pharmaceuticals.

Drawing on material from his books, the research that has gone into them, his unique access to the inner-workings of international business - both legal and criminal- and what he calls "the new business mentality," Jeffrey Robinson is a dynamic, charismatic, amusing and uniquely effective speaker.

Jeffrey lives in New York and London, and is fluent in French and English.

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Bob Brown

Bob Brown is an ultra distance runner. In 2004 he won the "Run Across America" which is a 3100 mile run from Huntington Beach, California on the West coast to New York on the east completed in 71 days (that's the equivalent of running 2 marathons a day for 71 days!). This follows coming 7th in the 2001 Trans-Australia Footrace in which he ran 50 miles per day for 65 days in the middle of the Australian summer (The heat was 50c at times).

Before turning to running full time, Bob was a primary school teacher from Cornwall. Throughout the 90s he took part in Iron Man competitions and in '95 took part in his first ultra distance triathlon (7.2 mile swim, 336 mile cycle, 78 mile run) and came second. The following year he came sixth (he admits he over trained beforehand) and in '97 entered what is considered to be the toughest race on the planet: World Deca-Ironman Championships in Monterrey, Mexico. This consisted of a 24 mile swim, 1120 mile cycle ride followed by a 262 mile run.

The race almost killed him, and due to sleep deprivation and an overdose of painkillers took a long time to get over both physically and mentally. 18 months later however he was back, breaking the record for cycling between Landsend and John O'Groats and back and then entering the Trans-Australia footrace.

Since completing Run Across America, Bob has appeared in the media on both sides of the Atlantic, and was honoured on comedy quiz show "They think it's all over…" as the "feelie sportsman". He is in demand on the international speaker circuit, sharing his extraordinary experiences and providing inspiration to people that you really can achieve anything you like. As he puts it "Everyone is good at something. Too many people don't take time to try and see what they are good at. I was pretty average as a youngster. Yet I always knew I would achieve a lot in my life. Take time to find out what you are good at. You never know what it will lead".

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Further Information

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