Julia Hobsbawm pioneered the term ‘integrity PR’ in the 1990s with a successful PR firm. She then pioneered a new kind of media networking company in the noughties – Editorial Intelligence – e.i- which maps and opens out the world of opinion forming to professionals. Amongst e.i’s activities are the UK Comment Awards (www.commentawards.com) and the symposium described as ‘A Very British Davos’, We Are Names Not Numbers (www.namesnotnumbers.com).

A regular commentator on media issues, she is London’s first Professor of Public Relations (London College of Communication, University of the Arts) and is the author of several books about media and communication including Where the Truth Lies: Trust & Mortality in PR & Journalism.

In 2009 she turned to the question of work-life balance in her book The See-Saw: 100 Ideas for work-life balance as she felt that “no matter how well your career is going, it is always and only how it goes in relation to your personal and family life that matters. I could see I needed to examine how women, men, children and of course the workplace copes – or doesn’t - with modern life and its conflicting priorities”.

(Photo: Copyright Guardian News & Media)