Jonathan Rush

Jonathan Rush is a freelance web content editor, writer and PR consultant experienced in the energy, property development, food and drink, healthcare, personal finance and charity sectors.

Jonathan was formerly communications director (2000-2003) at the government's gas and electricity consumer watchdog, energywatch. As a board member he worked closely with the Chair and chief executive, while managing a team of 12 media relations, internal coms, event management, marketing communications, political advisers, and web designers/editors in five offices around the UK. He planned, launched and acted as a spokesperson for the organisation's first major campaign, which forced the industry to adopt a new code of practice governing doorstep selling.

Jonathan has a good grasp of new media. He designed and edited a blog pushed at opinion formers around the globe following an international legal case.  He project managed the migration to a new website for charity, the Galapagos Conservation Trust and wrote and edited its website, Facebook, and its monthly eNews, which he issued to about 8,000 supporters. He is a co-founder (2007) and part-time editor of ContingencyToday.com, an online magazine covering the management of the threats posed by floods, industrial accidents, pandemics and cyber-crime. He regularly tweets @CTReviewEditor for ContingencyToday.com. In 2011 he was also interim news editor for sister print magazine: Geo: International.

Other client experience includes SmartFresh a fresh fruit treatment system which had attracted some criticism. The successful issues management and crisis preparedness programme required careful handling of trade and national food, environmental and healthcare media.

Recent and former clients include charity Wildlife Aid; pensions information service, Pendragon; DEFRA; Fairview New Homes; IT firm GDC; various PR agencies; and the Small Business Research Trust, on whose behalf he administered the All Party Parliamentary Small Business Group, one of Westminster's largest.

Jonathan's career includes spells at some of the UK's largest and specialist niche agencies. At Lowe Bell Good Relations (now Bell Pottinger) he worked for food and drink client, NutraSweet, National Power, the Millennium Dome (now O2 Arena), and AEA Technology. As a divisional director at The Communication Group his clients included The House Builders Federation, Merck Sharp and Dohme, The Independent Healthcare Association, Business for Sterling, Hutchison Whampoa, London Luton Airport, Fairview New Homes, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the Institution of Civil Engineers. At financial PR agency, Positive Profile, Jonathan worked across a range of client accounts including fund managers Premier Asset Management and Atlantis; Reuters subsidiary, Instinet; Gerrard (the UK's largest private client stockbrokers); McGraw Hill; and personal finance magazine, Money Observer.

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR); a Member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists; and a Freeman of the City of London. He is the author of the CIPR report on the Internet entitled The Death of Spin? published in April 2000. His first novel, My Persian Girl, a political thriller drawing heavily on his personal experience of the 1978 Iranian revolution, was published by Raider International in 2009. Jonathan is married with three adult children. He enjoys country walks in the Chilterns and supports Wasps rugby club.

Referees (contact details on request): Ann Robinson, Former Chair of energywatch, chief executive of charity, Scope, and director general of the British Retail Consortium; and Lord Guy Black, executive director, the Telegraph Media Group.