United Kingdom
As a Creative & Strategist focusing on luxury travel & sustainability, I craft narratives in my own voice as well as for high profile clients in the travel & tourism sector alongside running a tech start up. With a range of specialisms including branding, strategy, innovation, engagement and responsible action, I act as a consultant at all levels: public sector / governmental through to SME. As a freelance journalist, I write about the luxury travel & tourism sector for broadsheets and magazines in the UK & USA. A geographer at heart, I love to venture off the beaten track and seek a better understanding of our complex world. In recent years, work has led me to Antarctica, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Botswana and Western Australia amongst many others places. I believe in holistic, systems thinking and evidence-based decision making. Much of what I do centres around social, environmental and economic impact - at Vocalista we are working on practical ways to help our present and future platform users on their sustainability journey. We leverage the power of big data, set mathematics and GIS whilst maintaining the human touch. We help establish micro networks (for destinations, companies and shared-interest communities) within an inter-connected digital ecosystem for mutual support and collective action for the common good: think global, act local.
Vocalista is a tech start-up developing a digital platform & global hub for the travel & tourism sector, providing communication & collaboration tools to help users on the path to evidence-led social, environmental & economic sustainability. We combine big data, GIS & the human touch. We bring communities & decision makers together to shape the future, fostering destination stewardship from the top down & grassroots up. Our tools enable our users to self organise around the common good, to make destinations a better place to live & work, as well as visit. Functioning as a data-driven virtual town hall, Vocalista approaches destinations through the lens of systems change, crowdsourcing & crowd-mapping evidence, sentiment & ideas within defined geo-fences & a range of themes, leveraging our bespoke social, environmental & economic data-labelling tag set, which can be mapped to any external framework, be it the UN SDGs, ESG reporting or other requirements. Our platform aims to bolster the relationships between stakeholders from across the public, private & community sectors: residents, visitors, local businesses, local landowners, companies large & small, charities, local authorities, local tourism boards, national tourism boards, national parks & more. Think collective intelligence, collective action & collective impact. We are bootstrapped & immensely grateful for all the in-kind innovation support from InnovateUK, Techscaler, the UK Intellectual Property Office, Interface, Strathclyde University, Barclays Eagle Labs & many more. Our first tool is live: Citizens Report is a smartphone web-app for crowdsourcing environmental data in destinations, with verticals across infrastructure, agri-tech, marine litter and land management. The scope can easily be expanded to crowd-map a variety of ground-truth data themes, whatever the market demands.... Feel free to get in touch if you might like to partner up, collaborate or support in any way.
As a Fellow of the RGS, I serve as Chair of the volunteer London Committee. Our programme of events throughout the year include an evening of Microlectures, offering six people their first taste of public speaking; a chance to discover the society's collection and various social get togethers. We also act as a focus group for engaging the younger generation. I also serve on the committee of the Geographical Club - a members dining club which has its origins in the Raleigh Club, a dining club for explorers and travellers, established in 1826. At a meeting of that Club in 1830 a new Society, The Geographical Society of London, was formed and this subsequently became the Royal Geographical Society. In 1854 the Raleigh Club was dissolved and the Geographical Club created. The Club has kept close links with Society and it supports the Society through funding conservation work in the Society's archives and the Geographical Club Award. Distinguished members and guests have included: Mark Twain, Dr David Livingstone, HRH the Prince of Wales (later King George V), HRH the Crown Prince of Sweden, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Dr Fridtjof Nansen, Captain Roald Amundsen, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Winston Churchill, Freya Stark, Hilaire Belloc and Rudyard Kipling.
I craft narratives in various mediums for clients and under my own name. I am a geographer at heart, which spans many concepts - notably people, places and the environment. My work demonstrates a sense of curiosity about the world, underpinned by a drive to think responsibly. Full portfolio on https://www.annabelillingworth.com - including work in FT Weekend, TIME magazine, The Telegraph, i newspaper, SUITCASE Magazine, The Sunday Times, Conde Nast Traveller, Departures (US), Country & Town House, Escapism and many more. I have collaborated with The PC Agency on a number of premium clients within the luxury travel sector (tourism boards, destination developers, tour operators, yachts, airlines & hotels). This tends to be through website design and delivery, branding identity and storytelling through the written word, photography and film. I loved working for Visit Rwanda, helping create their new brand identity, with a brief to shift the global perception away from the genocide and towards responsible tourism and tech. I designed their new logo, to be featured on the strip of Arsenal FC (and later Paris St Germain). I also delivered a brand new website for them, choosing my own tech team, researched & wrote all the copy and, on location, produced & directed a film crew whilst taking still images myself. I still treasure the moment a silverback gorilla came and sat next to me in the jungle - it made all the digital work come alive!
The Water Smart Foundation's (WSF) aim is to facilitate alternative solutions to single-use plastic bottles. WSF provides water filtration units and re-useable glass bottles to the hospitality industry.
See Change works with policy makers, business, academia, philanthropists and non-profits to solve complex sustainability challenges. We collate information, connect the dots, engage stakeholders and discuss big ideas. We aim to be neutral and bipartisan, always looking at the big picture and international legacy.