Meet the Experts

Ade Shannon is CEO and founder of DiO, a creative-technology platform driving innovation across culture and the creative industries. He has extensive production and development experience having co-founded Mad As Birds Films where his credits included The Vanishing (Gerard Butler), Poms (Diane Keaton), and Six Minutes to Midnight (Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent).‍

DiO captures real-time emotional, physiological, and cognitive responses at scale, revealing the unfiltered truth of audience engagement. We combine skin response (emotional intensity), facial emotion analysis, voice sentiment, and AI synthesis to predict audience behaviour with 93% accuracy. This results in confident, data-driven decisions across the production lifecycle, from concept validation through to post-broadcast analysis. 

DiO supports the full broadcast lifecycle, from concept testing and script validation through to pilot screening, marketing execution, sponsor identification, and franchise development. At every stage, real-time audience intelligence replaces guesswork with evidence, helping broadcasters back winning formats, optimise creative decisions and build deep audience understanding that drives long-term commercial success.

Jade Beason swapped her corporate marketing career for life as a full-time creator and multi-business entrepreneur - and hasn’t looked back. After eight years in marketing, she launched her YouTube channel and turned it into a six-figure business within months.

Today, Jade runs multiple ventures: The Creator Project, a digital community helping creators turn passion into profit, and Social People, a social media marketing agency blending cultural insight with data to make content that actually works.

Her work has attracted an audience of over 450,000 creators and entrepreneurs, and she’s hosted events for global giants like Google, Apple, and Meta. Whether she’s on stage, online, or strategising behind the scenes, Jade’s mission is simple: to show creators and brands how they can make social media their superpower & earn an income!

Supporting the Global Film & TV Industry

At XE, we’re proud to support the Film & TV production community - an industry that is inherently international and increasingly complex from a financial perspective. Film productions are often funded by overseas investors, operate across multiple jurisdictions, and manage significant cross-border payments. As a result, they are naturally exposed to foreign exchange risk - whether through fluctuating budgets, international payroll, or supplier payments in different currencies. Our experience working with production companies has shown that managing this risk effectively can have a direct impact on project profitability. By combining FX risk management with seamless international payment solutions, XE helps production teams protect budgets, improve cost certainty, and operate more efficiently across borders.

If you would like to meet us at the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool on either 6th or 7th May please fill out an expression of interest form or contact us on: jonathan.gurr@xe.com or james.dzendrowski@xe.com

More information is available on our website here: www.xe.com/mt/uk-business

Mairi Brewis is YouTube’s lead for partnerships in Media and Responsibility for the UK. Her team manage relationships with the lead broadcasters, production companies, sports and news organisations, to help them maximize their YouTube presence.

Mairi has a strong interest in education, learning and children. She is a school governor, and previously served as a Trustee for Polka Theatre.

Based in Manchester and originally from Taiwan, Michelle Lin is a strategic leader specialising in the intersection of traditional media and the digital-first ecosystem. As K7 Media’s Director of Digital Strategy, she translates complex shifts across streaming, social platforms, AI, and creator-led content into commercially actionable insights.

With nearly nine years of international experience in Asian television, Michelle now oversees K7’s digital editorial direction, including high-level reporting on branded entertainment, microdramas, and global platform trends. She acts as a vital bridge, helping clients navigate the fast-moving digital landscape through data-informed research and expert consultation.

Rob Drake has the best job in the world because he gets to do what he's wanted to do since he was a kid: tell stories. 

He learnt his craft in adventure travel documentaries like Ewan McGregor's Long Way Down and By Any Means, before crossing over into the brand world where he founded Brave Spark, a challenger creative studio that fused agency and production under one roof.

Over more than a decade, Rob built Brave Spark into a go-to studio across the UK and North America, working with brands including Coca-Cola, HSBC, Warner Brothers, Mattel, Universal Music, Heinz, Visa and Just Eat. After a successful acquisition and exit, Rob saw an opportunity to take everything he'd learned about brands back into the broadcast world, helping the industry find different funding models to get great television made during increasingly difficult financial backdrops.

That's Out There. A storytelling studio built to win in the attention economy. Out There brings together TV's best storytellers and brand strategists to create work that wins attention, not just buys it.

We're just getting started in building something new. So come find us if you're a producer looking for brand funding, a broadcaster open to new models, or a brand that's tired of making things people skip. 

Let's tell some stories together.

Stella is YouTube’s lead for news & podcasting partnerships in the UK. She manages relationships with leading news broadcasters, publishers & podcasting companies to grow engagement & reach. Prior to YouTube, Stella was a civil servant, leading media & creative industries policy at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Supporting the Global Film & TV Industry

At XE, we’re proud to support the Film & TV production community - an industry that is inherently international and increasingly complex from a financial perspective. Film productions are often funded by overseas investors, operate across multiple jurisdictions, and manage significant cross-border payments. As a result, they are naturally exposed to foreign exchange risk - whether through fluctuating budgets, international payroll, or supplier payments in different currencies. Our experience working with production companies has shown that managing this risk effectively can have a direct impact on project profitability. By combining FX risk management with seamless international payment solutions, XE helps production teams protect budgets, improve cost certainty, and operate more efficiently across borders.

If you would like to meet us at the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool on either 6th or 7th May please fill out an expression of interest form or contact us on: jonathan.gurr@xe.com or james.dzendrowski@xe.com

More information is available on our website here: www.xe.com/mt/uk-business