Our Team

Lisa Shaddick

Managing Director

Lisa drives nearly forty years of elite public relations execution, anchoring Indaba’s reputation for uncompromised market authority. Since taking total ownership of the agency through a successful management buyout in 2008, she has rejected standard hands-off executive roles, personally spearheading strategies for clients across the globe. A Fellow and former board member of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Lisa commands an expert grasp of communication mechanics. Holding a definitive degree in Public Relations from SMU in Dallas, Texas, she is a fierce advocate for transparent data and rigorous evaluation—ensuring every campaign she steers delivers quantified commercial returns

• Favourite film: Dirty Dancing
• Favourite food: Any Mexican food!
• Favourite song: Ain’t missing you (John Waite, 1984)
• Fun fact: I grew up in the Bahamas

Valérie Askins

Valérie combines hard-news journalistic instinct with senior enterprise marketing experience to drive sustained cross-border campaign success. Holding a Master’s in Journalism & Communication from Bordeaux University and a Diploma in Translation from the Chartered Institute of Linguists in London, she spent her early career in print newsrooms before spearheading high-stakes corporate communications for global aviation giants Air France and Cathay Pacific. At Indaba, Valérie commands our French-language portfolio and international media outreach, deploying her native fluency, deep-seated cultural intelligence, and rigorous linguistic precision to ensure complex corporate messaging lands flawlessly in any market.

• Favourite film: Les Misérables
• Favourite food: Les frites
• Favourite song: Y Viva España
• Fun fact: I spent the summer working as a clown called Zaza in Québec when I was 20

Celine Borsberry

Celine deploys a powerful transatlantic perspective to spearhead Indaba’s portfolios across the UK, North America and Europe. Holding a Master of Communication Management from the University of Southern California (USC), she blends American-trained strategic rigour with deep European market intelligence. Operating with native fluency in both Dutch and English, Celine excels at uncovering high-impact media opportunities and pitching complex narratives to international journalists. She manages our footprints across the Benelux and Anglo-American markets with a calm-under-pressure boardroom attitude, turning high-stakes press challenges into seamless commercial wins.

• Favourite film: La La Land
• Favourite food: my husband’s homemade pizza
• Favourite song: A Thousand Years
• Fun fact: I once won a mechanical bull riding competition in Australia

Nina Bressler

Nina deploys an incisive, problem-solving mindset and deep media intelligence to spearhead Indaba’s Scandinavian portfolio. Drawing on a rigorous background as a Swedish newsroom journalist, she possesses a native understanding of how Nordic media landscapes operate and how complex stories must be structured to cut through. Nina translates abstract objectives into highly focused campaigns, bringing a relentless dedication to quality and absolute professionalism to ensure our clients dictate the narrative across Northern Europe.

• Favourite film: Lord of the Rings trilogy (I know, that's three, not one!)
• Favourite food: Anything with truffle
• Favourite song: Sometimes (James)
• Fun fact: I'm a happy solo traveller, having visited Italy, France, Spain and Ireland on my own

Sarah Claridge

Sarah bridges the gap between complex industrial engineering and high-impact global media strategy. Backed by nearly twenty years of B2B public relations experience, spanning agile startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprise giants, she brings a rare Mechanical Engineering degree to Indaba’s technical roster. Sarah specialises in translating highly complex, deep-tech architectures like photonics, artificial intelligence, and Industry 4.0 into crisp, commercially driven narratives. A CIPR Diploma holder and former Commissioning Editor for Engineering & Technology, she leverages top-tier editorial instincts to strip away technical friction and ensure complex corporate messages land with absolute market clarity.

• Favourite film: Singing in the Rain
• Favourite food: Cheese or chocolate - can I have two?
• Favourite song: Don't stop me now (Queen)
• Fun fact: I once served George Harrison (of Beatles fame) and remember asking him if he’d like more peas!

Georgia Lewis

Georgia commands a formidable international newsroom pedigree, orchestrating high-stakes media strategies across London, Sydney, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. Her career spans extensive editorial deployments for national newspapers and leading B2B publications, specializing in complex, high-scrutiny sectors including oil and gas, renewable energy, automotive, and technology. Georgia leverages her deep geopolitical intelligence to guide communications for elite global bodies, including the World Petroleum Council, the International Gas Union, and multiple UN agencies. At Indaba, she translates complex institutional agendas into razor-sharp public narratives that command global attention.

• Favourite film: Pulp Fiction
• Favourite food: Can't choose between French or Italian
• Favourite song: Son Of A Preacher Man (Dusty Springfield)
• Fun fact: I was born in the city of Wagga Wagga, which has amused passport control staff all over the world

Riggs Shaddick

Chief Morale Officer & CEO (Canine Executive Officer)

Riggs serves as Indaba’s third-generation Canine Executive Officer, spearheading workplace well-being and stress-mitigation strategies. Having entered the firm at a highly agile twelve weeks old, he anchors the virtual headquarters, monitoring our day-to-day operations seamlessly from key comfort assets like the office sofa. During the peak fiscal summer months, he transitions to our outdoor perimeter, overseeing regional aviation logistics (birds) and competitor surveillance (cats) while maximising solar absorption. A dedicated hands-on leader, Riggs routinely audits international client touchpoints with live guest appearances on Teams calls.

• Favourite film: Lethal Weapon
• Favourite food: Rigatoni (his namesake)
• Favourite song: Who Let the Dogs Out (Baha Men)
• Fun fact: People always think I'm named after the character in Lethal Weapon, not the pasta

Mark Solesbury

Mark transforms social media ecosystems from passive brand vanity metrics into high-performing commercial assets. Fusing deep in-house enterprise experience with agile agency-side execution, he specialises in building synchronised organic and paid digital frameworks for global automotive, consumer electronics and lifestyle brands. At Indaba, Mark engineers cross-platform social strategies designed to command target audiences and drive measurable pipeline growth, delivering rigorous, context-backed data analysis to ensure your marketing spend converts directly into market share.

• Favourite film: Anchorman
• Favourite food: Christmas dinner
• Favourite song: Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
• Fun fact: I’m named after my dad's favourite Man Utd player (Mark Hughes) and once met Roy Keane in the Little Chef

Pippa Watts

Pippa anchors Indaba’s senior leadership roster, delivering three decades of high-level counsel and tactical execution across pan-European and global markets. Blending a German and South African heritage, she possesses a profound, innate understanding of international corporate dynamics. Pippa eliminates cross-border narrative barriers by operating fluidly in senior positions across English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. She decants this massive multi-market intelligence directly into our complex consumer and industrial campaigns, ensuring our clients maintain a unified, authoritative footprint across every territory they target.

• Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption
• Favourite food: Bread and cheese - couldn't live without it
• Favourite song: What a wonderful world (Louis Armstrong)
• Fun fact: My parents only had a boy's name ready when I was born - Robert - so I stayed unnamed for a week

Steve Lawson

Financial Director

Steve serves as the foundational architect of Indaba’s fiscal infrastructure, safeguarding the agency’s financial health and capital structure since day one. He bridges the gap between raw operational metrics and long-term commercial viability, ruthlessly managing financial controls while ensuring seamless account operations across our international borders. In lockstep with Managing Director Lisa, Steve designs and executes the high-level financial blueprints required to mitigate risk, maximise capital efficiency and secure sustained, profitable long-term growth across our international footprint.

• Favourite film: Alien
• Favourite food: Fillet steak
• Favourite song: Perfect (Ed Sheeran)
• Fun fact: I used to be a drummer in a punk band