Meet the team… Gemma, Managing Director
Gemma leads Creative Listening with a blend of strategy, creativity, and heart. With a background in teaching and publishing, and now overseeing both business operations and client accounts, she thrives on solving challenges and collaborating with talented creatives to deliver media that truly makes a difference for learners.
Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and how this supports your role at Creative Listening?
I began my career in South Korea as a teacher before moving into educational publishing, first in Korea and then in London. Over the years, I ran teams, commissioned content, and worked in strategic leadership roles that gave me a perspective on both the big picture and the finer details of how content is created and delivered.
Now, as Managing Director at Creative Listening, I focus on the business side — systems, operations, and strategy — while staying closely involved with client accounts. At heart, I still have an editorial eye, and I love problem solving — finding smart ways to deliver content that feels fresh, effective, and far bigger than the budget might suggest.
How is AI influencing the work that Creative Listening do?
AI has become a valuable part of our toolkit. We use it to speed up repetitive tasks, test creative directions, and visualise ideas more quickly. But what excites me most is how it gives us more time to focus on what really matters: the pedagogy, the creativity, and the human connection that AI can’t replace.
What do you think makes Creative Listening stand out and what is unique about our approach?
We bring together two worlds that don’t often overlap: deep expertise in how people learn and high-quality creative production. That means everything we make is both engaging and genuinely effective for learners. We’ve also risen to the industry-wide challenge of delivering more for less and under tighter deadlines. By streamlining our processes and developing smarter ways of working, we help clients achieve their goals in sustainable and realistic ways, without compromising on quality.
What are your highlights of the job?
For me, the highlight is problem solving. Every project has restrictions whether time, budget, editorial wishlists, market requirements, learner needs, or modern viewing habits. I love working out how to balance all of these to create something that really delivers for learners.
I also love those moments when something just looks or sounds so cool and fresh that it feels extra rewarding. Education media can sometimes play it safe, and of course budgets aren’t always huge, but what we produce can be genuinely impressive with the resources available.
Over the last few years, there’s also been growing pressure to deliver more for less and on tighter deadlines. We’ve risen to that challenge by streamlining how we work, developing new processes, and finding smarter ways of producing content. It means we can support clients to achieve their goals in realistic and sustainable ways, without compromising on quality.
And finally, working with so many amazing creatives is a real highlight. I’m constantly inspired by the talent and energy they bring to Creative Listening, and by the way their ideas push projects to a whole new level.
Finally, what have you been reading recently?
I live near the Lake District and have recently read James Rebanks novels about farming, his family, identity and his ancestral sense of purpose. The pace of change we face today as we transition through the AI revolution throws up big questions about humanity and the future and education will have to shift. The message this book sends about people, communities and nature has inspired me to think hard about purpose and started to inform our recommendations for learners.