Claire Derrick

Founding Director and Academy Principal at The Event Academy

Speaker

Claire Derrick is a founding director and academy principal of Event Academy. She studied International Business & Marketing at the University of Greenwich, London and New Hampshire College, Massachusetts, USA. She began her UK career as an Executive Assistant and event organiser with the Duchess of York’s charity, Children in Crisis, planning and implementing special occasions with British VIP's, celebrities and Royalty. She made the decision to widen her experience in the not-for-profit sector and took the position of Head of National Fundraising at a UK-wide medical charity, where she recruited and managed a team of fundraisers and introduced many new fundraising concepts. She then went on to head up a number of charitable organisations, creating and implementing strategies to improve income and broaden awareness.

Claire then made the leap of founding her own event agency and worked with many British companies, charities and Universities, helping them to achieve their business goals through events. Now a member of the Association of Event Managers, Claire is a contributing journalist for the London and UK Datebook. Since founding the Event Academy she has also worked in an event management or consultancy capacity for clients in the USA, UK, Europe, China, Peru, Israel, Nepal and Vietnam and The Netherlands.

Claire loves to lecture and is happiest when running courses in class with her students! She lives in Sussex England with her husband and two children and is a Black Belt in Karate, having competed at an international level.