The Team

Nicola Hartley

Founder/CEO

After 4 years at Richards Butler (now Reed Smith) including secondments to MTV and ITV, Nicola moved to Endemol UK as Legal and Business Affairs Executive for 3 years and then to Jamie Oliver Limited for 6 years as Senior Legal and Business Affairs Manager for Fresh One Productions, Fat Lemon, Fresh Pictures and Jamie’s Youtube and MCN channels.

Nicola set up Mint & Co in 2016 with a vision to provide accessible, commercial business affairs support for the media and creative industries, whilst championing a flexible working ethos.

Is: down to earth, positive, tenacious and unfailingly calm in any crisis.

Loves: Interior design, the sea, good wine and her cat Lethal Basil.

Jules Hammond

Operations Manager

Jules trained as a musician before working on the operations side of the record industry, as product manager for a variety of labels. At theatrical data specialists Purple Seven she oversaw client operations, before becoming Studio Manager for a creative agency. At Mint & Co she manages day to day operations, supporting Nicola, Maisy and the Mint Collective.

Jules is across all functions of the business aside from client relationships and consultant management. She manages social media and marketing (including the blog) consultant and client billing, our IT and trade subscriptions, organises consultant socials and internal mint Collective comms re client and industry updates. She keeps all internal databases and documents in tip-top shape and assists with biz dev.

Is: Organised, enthusiastic, broad-minded.

Loves: Cooking, Grand Designs, video games and cycling.

Maisy Maddox

Client and People Relationship Manager

With over ten years in communication and change at PwC and IBM, working in Europe and globally, followed by a stint in legal recruitment, Maisy then trained as a business coach. For the past ten years, Maisy has enjoyed coaching international business leaders for Untapped, running HR and client service reviews for media businesses, training in schools and businesses to improve communication and written for BT TV, Volleyball and Netball magazine. Maisy brings a love of connecting with people and a passion for client service. At Mint & Co Maisy manages workflow, focuses on improving and nurturing Mint & Co’s relationships with clients and consultants, and helps build and support the Mint Collective team.

Is: creative, upbeat, a problem solver, caring and curious.

Loves: cooking, skiing, The Archers, walks with Mitch the cockapoo and everything about Christmas.

Sarah Leach

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Sarah has over 18 years’ experience in the creative industries. She worked in business affairs at BBC Worldwide before moving to Princess Productions (makers of Friday Night Project, T4, Got to Dance, Something for the Weekend) where she worked for 6 years. She became Head of Legal and Business Affairs there for 4 years before moving out of London to Bath and starting life as a consultant. Sarah is a production and distribution specialist through and through, for TV, podcast and branded content. During Sarah’s time at Mint & Co, she has worked on a variety of unscripted TV, branded, immersive and audio projects, including for The Connected Set, Fulwell 73, Zinc, Novel, Peanut & Crumb, Up Creative, Storyhunter and Wiser Films.

Sarah has run training seminars for various Mint clients, including AudioTrain, TRC Media and The TV Collective, and regularly takes part in events such as The Podcast Show on behalf of Mint. On the audio side, Sarah has worked on a variety of broadcaster and platform deals including Wondery, Acast, Luminary, Audible, Spotify, NBC, Amazon, BBC Sounds and BBC Radio, plus branded projects such as WeTransfer for Curly Media and ‘Get Birding’, award winning podcast for Peanut & Crumb sponsored by Swarovski. Recently, Sarah has been assisting with the Audio UK Terms of Trade negotiations with BBC.

Is: Pro-active, reliable, friendly and persuasive.

Loves: Family, sun, snow, tennis, gin and Bath Rugby.

Lisa Rudrum

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Lisa worked in private practice in Australia for 7 years before moving to London. Over the last 25 years in the UK, Lisa has held senior business affairs roles in the television industry. She was VP of Business Affairs at Sony Pictures Television International Production for 7 years, and prior to that was Director of Legal and Business Affairs at Entertainment Rights plc. Lisa has broad experience advising across entertainment, factual entertainment and factual television and podcast production and distribution, and on the development and exploitation of ancillary products and rights, and merchandising. She has particular expertise in respect of the production and exploitation of television formats. Since becoming a consultant, Lisa has been providing business affairs services to various TV and podcast clients including Stellify Media and Fremantle, Red Bull Studios, Zinc, Beakus, The Nest, Goldwala, Northern Studios and Persephonica.

Is: Calm, pragmatic and a creative problem-solver.

Loves: Sunshine, cheese and her Westie, Jackson.

Guy Wheeler

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Guy is an experienced media lawyer specialising in content distribution, licensing, and regulatory compliance. With Mint & Co., he has worked with clients such as ITV Studios, ITVX, Fifth Season and Sky on a wide range of agreements including programme licensing, app distribution and development, channel carriage (including the launch of FAST services and apps), platform agreements and ad sales, working with a broad range of stakeholders and partners. Prior to joining Mint & Co, he was Associate Principal Counsel at The Walt Disney Company, where he led regional teams licensing for Disney’s Film, TV, and Channel businesses and paving the way for Disney+’s launch. Guy’s background also includes his time as Head of Legal for ChelloZone (now AMC Networks International) and his work at City law firms Travers Smith and Field Fisher. Guy’s experience also spans CAP committee service and deep expertise in TV and on-demand regulation, including Ofcom requirements.

Is: a ‘can do’ effective problem solver and deal facilitator with a strong commercial outlook.

Loves: scuba diving, open water swimming, running, homemade cocktails and going to muddy music festivals.

Karthi Perumal

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Karthi is an experienced media lawyer with a specialism in television and film development and production, particularly scripted. Recent experience includes working at scripted production powerhouse, Bad Wolf, and The Story Collective, working on all agreements from development through to production and exploitation. Karthi also consults for PACT, working across Equity and WGGB matters and cutting-edge AI thinking.  Karthi started her business affairs life at ITV, where she worked on the commissioning and acquisition of programmes for all ITV platforms and also qualified as a lawyer with seats at Olswang (CMS) and DLA Piper. A year after qualification, she moved to media specialist law firm Sheridans, where she spent five years as an Associate. At Sheridans, Karthi advised on commercial and intellectual property issues associated with the development, financing, production and monetisation of cross-platform content. Clients included production companies, broadcasters, content distributors, and talent.

Is: commercially minded, proactive, practical and solution-oriented.

Loves: quality time with her daughters, staying active through strength training and running, and winding down with an action-packed thriller series.

Charlotte Trombert

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Charlotte is a general commercial lawyer with a focus on the media industries. She trained at Harbottle & Lewis and following qualification spent 3 years at NBCUniversal before moving to Scripps Networks, the company behind the Food Network and Travel Channel. Her experience of over 10 years includes linear and on-demand content licensing, channel distribution, ad sales, marketing, rights management & compliance. Charlotte now works as a consultant while living in beautiful Geneva. Charlotte has most recently been working on a placement basis with All3 Media, advising on linear/VOD rights licensing. 

Is: Diligent, adaptable, resilient, fair, pragmatic, calm & a happy soul.

Is: Blue skies, the sea, cooking, dark chocolate, laughter & deep breaths.

Halina Wielogorska

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Halina is a music and entertainment specialist with 15 years of in-house and private practice experience. She studied law at Oxford and trained at a top-tier international law firm (Hogan Lovells) before diversifying into music in 2010.

Halina is renowned for her highly commercial style; a skill she learned while operating at the epicentre of the business, label, publishing, sponsorship, content creation, merchandising, brand collaborations, events and legal divisions of some of the music industry’s most successful music start-ups (Boiler Room, AEI Group). Since returning to private practice and becoming a consultant, she has built her own roster of artists, songwriters, producers, record labels, publishers, agents, managers, production companies, promoters and other entrepreneurs. Halina works from a place of service mindset with a strong focus on reliability. She greatly values the diversity of her role, as she is highly motivated by continuous learning.

Is: Optimistic, a fast processor, known for problem solving, extroverted, kind, open-hearted

Loves: Music, storytelling, creativity in all its forms, making people laugh, nature, hosting, clashing patterns 

Keith Porritt

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Keith is an experienced commercial, legal and business affairs executive with 35 years+ in commercial media IP licensing and exploitation in domestic and international media/content distribution, production and broadcast businesses. Keith was previously Commercial Director at UKTV, General Counsel of Sparrowhawk Media Group, and SVP of LBA at Disney overseeing Disney’s television licensing in EMEA and started his career in the media department of city firm Richards Butler.

Is: A confident negotiator with keen analytical, strategic, and influencing skills, empathetic and inclusive in approach, a clear communicator, and prepared to ask and resolve the difficult questions.

Loves: Road cycling, history of art, the craic of good food, wine, and company.

Emma Smithies

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Emma has amassed a huge amount of experience at producers and broadcasters throughout her 20 year career, in both scripted and non-scripted TV and digital and social content, building up a wealth of trusted and respected relationships in the industry. Her style is pragmatic, warm and approachable and she builds deep respect and understanding in her dealings with clients and those on the other side of a project. She is fiercely proud of the British TV production and broadcast industry, and is committed to sustainability both in production and broadcast. 

Emma’s career began over 20 years ago in-house at Avalon, working on projects including Jerry Springer the Opera and a range of successful comedy, scripted and entertainment formats such as Taskmaster and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. She then crossed over to work with broadcaster Channel 5 for a number of years, before moving to Talkback Thames where she looked after a slate covering Factual, Fact Ent and Entertainment, looking after some of the nation’s most iconic titles including Grand Designs and Escape to the Country. 

Emma has been responsible for some incredibly successful titles throughout her career, including most recently at ITV as Head of Legal and Business Affairs for Content, looking after I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Love Island and bringing Big Brother to its’ new home on ITV. She loves visiting sets on location during filming, and always puts sustainability at the top of the production agenda. Emma thoroughly enjoys both the commercial business affairs aspects of a negotiation, from reviewing and analysing budgets to make cost-effective savings without damaging the on–screen value, to the negotiation of rights packages in the rapidly evolving landscape of content consumption. 

Is: Passionate about building brilliant, respected working relationships and dedicated to achieving the best outcome for both producer and broadcaster. She is able to navigate through challenging negotiations with optimism, determination, resilience and patience. 

Loves: Yoga (ideally combined with travel), long walks with loved ones, cold water swimming, being outside, great food, good books, belly laughs and winter nights in front of the fire. 

Jade Edgley

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Originally hailing from Australia, Jade has almost two decades of experience in the UK media industry. She has worked across the breadth of the industry, which includes independent production companies, broadcasters, film distributors and multimedia companies. She has worked in-house for Lionsgate, the BBC, Vice, and Warner Bros and alongside broadcasters and streamers such as Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 and Netflix.

Jade’s work in television production spans the entire life cycle of programme making, supporting teams on business affairs and compliance throughout the process. From complicated access series such as Warship or The Choir: Aylesbury, through to high-profile reality formats such as First Dates and First Dates Hotel, as well as large scale blue-chip natural history programmes such as Our Oceans. Jade is passionate about working with teams to navigate tricky business affairs negotiations and complicated compliance issues to get their programmes on screens. 

As well as working in television production, Jade has a breadth of experience in other areas of the media, including international channel licensing, television and film distribution, editorial content for online and magazines, commercial campaigns and digital media and technology.

Is: Passionate, resourceful and enthusiastic about working with teams to help them achieve their full creative ambition (and secretly very pleased her job involves watching a lot of TV!).

Loves: Travel, family adventures, horse riding, writing stories and poems and taking up new skills (tennis being the new passion!).

Mark Gillman

Business Affairs Assistant

Mark is a law graduate, broadcaster and radio programming specialist. Concurrent with a successful career in broadcasting, Mark established ROCK THE RADIO, a consultancy that develops custom programming concepts for brands, and completed the Legal Practice Course at BPP University Law School in London. Mark assists clients with special projects from time to time, including contract reviews.

Is: Tenacious, indefatigable and fiercely loyal.

Loves: Biscuits, running and brave people.

Kirsty Howarth

Content & Compliance Consultant

Kirsty is a highly experienced, creative and collaborative media and compliance consultant working across all traditional and new media platforms. She regularly deals with cutting-edge legal issues and high-profile matters for national and international publishers, broadcasters and producers dealing with all content and compliance issues as well as with legal and regulatory complaints. She worked for many years at RPC, the leading defendant media litigation practice in the country. She then moved in-house enjoying senior roles at Penguin Books, the Daily Mail/MailOnline and The Times and The Sunday Times.

Kirsty now advises a range of digital, print, audio, TV and film producers and publishers. She brings her wealth of pre- and post- publication and broadcast expertise to Mint & Co. Kirsty’s specialisms include libel, privacy, copyright, trade marks, passing off, contempt and data protection, as well as the relevant regulatory codes and the criminal and civil laws affecting all broadcasters and publishers. She has run specialist Compliance training sessions on behalf of Mint with TRC Media, and her Mint & Co clients have included Little Gem Media, Starstruck Media, Curly Media, Narratively, Novel and The Nest TV Productions. 

Is: Practical, calm and ever curious.

Loves: Food and wine, the Scottish islands, family and our cocker spaniel puppy.

Luci Sanan

Commercial Consultant

Luci Sanan is a commercially minded specialist in IP strategy and monetisation, focusing on digital, brand entertainment and rights distribution. With 20 year’s experience, Luci has a deep knowledge of the distribution market having worked at IMG, DRG, Banijay and Content FilmTV in acquisitions, sales & development roles before spending 7 years in the senior management team at The Story Lab at Dentsu, one of the world’s largest media agencies. Fascinated by the evolution of commercial models in the creative industries, Luci regularly speaks at industry trade events and judges industry awards, as well as running training seminars on behalf of Mint. Luci manages the IP rights and strategy for leading UK & US independent production company Brinkworth, is Senior Advisor to independent creative agency Atomic Studios; and is responsible for joint ventures including new digital channels with creators and brands at Cowshed Collective. Luci is Non-Executive Director on the Commercial Board of public service broadcaster S4C, and founder and director of social enterprise 53 Degrees North Media Academy. 

Is: Adventurous, reliable, commercial

Loves: Scuba diving, cheese and badgers!

Clive Rich

Legal & Business Affairs Consultant

Clive has 4 decades of experience as a lawyer, a law-tech entrepreneur, professional negotiator and digital media executive.

He has worked as a lawyer or negotiator for and with a broad spectrum of media brands including Apple, Microsoft, Vodafone, Tesco, Napster, SanDisk, the Royal Opera House, Fox Television, Pepsi, the BBC, Sony, Warner and Bertelsmann. He has in-depth experience of media drafting and negotiating, including agreements for recording, publishing, management, music and TV distribution, soundtracks, music and TV licensing, music and TV production, merchandising and M and A of media companies.  As a digital media executive, Clive has successfully run profit centres for companies such as Sony and Bertelsmann, including digital businesses and the business side of Simon Cowell’s Syco TV joint venture – negotiating global deals for X Factor, Got Talent and American Idol.

He is the author of “The Yes Book: The Art of Better Negotiation”, published by Virgin Books and also designed and successfully launched a negotiation App called “Close My Deal”, enabling people to understand the basis of successful negotiation and apply the skills to everyday scenarios. He has also founded two law tech businesses catering for SMEs, including a specialist AI Bot, with its own legal knowledge database and IP for rewarding data owners when their data is used to answer questions. He has specialist knowledge and background in the drafting and negotiation of technology agreements and is the author of ‘Law for Small Business for Dummies’ published by Wylie, as well as being a CEDR trained Mediator and a CiArb qualified Arbitrator.

Clive is: optimistic, patient, resilient, humorous, thoughtful, collaborative, reassuring and commercially minded.

Clive loves: family meals, two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels (who also love family meals), Fulham FC (which is why he has to be an optimist), writing, helping clients feel better, fried zucchini.