Whitaker-Jones joins Watkins Media

Laura Whitaker-Jones has joined Watkins Media as marketing and publicity manager, overseeing the marketing and publicity team for the Watkins, Nourish and Duncan Baird imprints.

Whitaker-Jones was previously the senior marketing and publicity manager at Phoenix International Publications where she executed campaigns for the company and its authors across 10 global publishing markets. Before that, she was an associate editor at Bloomsbury and a marketing assistant at HarperCollins.

Vicky Hartley, Watkins sales and marketing director, said: “Already Laura has proved to be a tremendous asset to Watkins: her energy, enthusiasm and commitment to her team and our authors have been inspiring. She’s a fantastic team player and has been delivering great results even in the short time she has been with us. Laura is one of the rising stars of the UK publishing scene and after achieving so much in the US, we are so excited to see what she can help us to achieve.”

Rachel Gladman joins Whitaker-Jones’ team from Hachette Partworks as marketing executive, while Fizza Nayyer has been promoted to publicity and marketing associate.

The moves are part of a string of appointments which also sees Michael Watson promoted to senior publicist (global) at imprint Repeater.

While at Repeater, which he joined in 2018, Watson has created campaigns for Grace Blakeley’s Stolen, Wendy Liu’s Abolish Silicon Valley and Mat Osman’s The Ruins, among others. 

He will be joined by Elinor Potts, who joins Repeater's team as the new publicity and marketing assistant.