Our staff

Plain English Campaign employs over 40 staff, most of whom work in its offices in New Mills, Derbyshire. The campaign has a team of trainers who run the various training courses and seminars that take place up and down the country. Our editing team is, we believe, the best plain-English editing department in the world.

Although we do not use freelancers as a general rule, we do occasionally have vacancies on the editing and administrative teams. If you would like to be considered for a position here in the future, please send your CV and a covering letter, explaining why you feel you would be suitable, to info@plainenglish.co.uk, or to our postal address.

Meet some of the campaign team and departments.

	Chrissie Maher OBE (Founder-director) launched Plain English Campaign in 1979. You can find out more information about Chrissie, her life and her work in the 'About the campaign' section. Chrissie also compiles a regular 'blog' where she writes about whatever has caught her attention. You can read it here. E-mail: chrissie@plainenglish.co.uk
	Tony Maher (General Manager) joined Plain English Campaign after several years as head of chemistry at a local secondary school. Before that he managed several different printing companies. Tony is in charge of all the activities of our main offices. On the rare occasions when he is not in the office, he can usually be found scuba diving in the deep waters around Tenerife. E-mail: tony@plainenglish.co.uk
	George Maher has worked at the campaign since 1982. He is a regular speaker and commentator in the media on plain language and its benefits to government and business. He has given seminars and presentations in the UK, the US, France, Canada, Gibraltar, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, India, Brazil, Ghana, Australia, New Zealand and Russia. E-mail: george@plainenglish.co.uk
	Peter Griffiths (Company Secretary) Peter joined Kidsons Chartered Accountants in 1970 and became a partner in 1973. He formed his own practice in 1979. In 1993, Chrissie asked him to become Plain English Campaign's accountant and soon had him editing as well! The campaign has sent him to Europe and America and he visited Moscow State University for us in 2005 and 2006. E-mail: peter@plainenglish.co.uk
	John Wild (Training and Development Manager) joined Plain English Campaign after a career as a science teacher. He has also managed quality assurance in the chemical industry, where he was responsible for drafting ISO 9000 quality manuals (not always in plain English!). His work at Plain English Campaign involves him in training, giving presentations, editing, and document design. He has spoken publicly and trained people in many countries throughout the world. E-mail: john@plainenglish.co.uk
	Katherine Ardern (Head of Editing) joined the campaign in 1994 after completing her teaching degree. She has a vast amount of editing experience and oversees all the work done by our editing team. She regularly visits clients' offices to discuss their editing needs. She has acted as an ambassador for the campaign on various trips overseas, including visits to America, Ghana and Hong Kong. Her expertise lies in linguistics, grammar, and buying expensive shoes. E-mail: katherine@plainenglish.co.uk
	Helen Mayo (Training Manager) has been with the campaign for eight years. She is responsible for organising in-house training courses for our clients. E-mail: helen@plainenglish.co.uk
	Marie Claire (Press Officer) has considerable experience in commercial public relations including a lengthy spell with Orange. She also has a background in teaching reading to adults and children. She has a number of broadcast interests and is an established voice-over artist. She is the main contact for our press office.. E-mail: pecpressoffice@aol.com
	Steve Jenner (Media Consultant) is a founding director of Derbyshire commercial stations High Peak Radio and Ashbourne Radio. He has wide and varied TV and radio experience and was formerly press officer to the campaign. He currently presents the morning show on Ashbourne Radio and the afternoon programme on High Peak Radio. He advises on and supports the activities of the press office. E-mail: pecpressoffice@aol.com

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Administration and press department The busy administration and press department handles the day-to-day running of the campaign, and deals with all enquiries, estimates for editing and testing, distributing documents and all press interviews and other media activities. The department also co-ordinates all the campaign's training courses.

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Editing department Our experienced team of editors comes from a wide range of backgrounds, but all have a great deal of experience in making even the most difficult of documents understandable for everyone. Each document that comes in is given to a particular editor. That editor will work closely with the client throughout the editing process, to make sure that everyone is happy with the end result. The department is also responsible for all proofreading and quality controlling documents.

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