IN THE POD

Ahrani began her media career in local radio; Nickelodeon & TCC (The Children’s Channel). Her big break came in 1997 at the BBC when she received a call from the Deputy Editor of her favourite childhood science show Tomorrow’s World. The rest as they say is history! Ahrani went on to work on other high profile shows including Trust Me, I’m A Doctor and the BBC’s Time Season. She wrote about Time Travel for Tomorrow’s World magazine interviewing top physicists Michio Kaku, Kip Thorne and Alan Guth. She has filmed on the World’s largest crane ship and oil rigs for Discovery Channel. She is HUET-qualified (Helicopter Underwater Escape Training) and worked with a range of both experts and on-screen talent including interviewing on the Red Carpet.

She is BBC Education experienced. She worked on the 15 part school science series for 7 to 11 year olds KS2 Revision Science, and the teen social issues series Youth Nation.

She also worked for the BBC’s Lifeskills Commissioning & Development Team, developing a number of science and general factual programmes for their Age season; Poverty season and AIDS season.

The combination she offered of science qualifications plus experience in entertainment programming was very useful in terms of making rather didactic subjects accessible.

She has been referred to as a brilliant creative mind and an ideas person with an ability to spot trends and translate into workable and accessible programme proposals.

Ahrani worked as an enabler for Eureka! Britain’s first hands-on children’s museum in Yorkshire. Juggling school groups of up to 100 at a time, with her fellow enablers, she helped 4 to 6 year olds understand and engage with the interactive exhibits, many of which were STEM-related.

As well as TV and writing projects, she is also a Mentor for the School of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, where she gained her first degree BSc Honours Genetics-Biochemistry. She was nominated for an award for her mentoring and is also recognised as a Woman of Influence by the University. Her fascination with the human brain and the way we think led to an MSc Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. She has acted as a Mentor for King’s College.

As a STEM Ambassador for UK charity STEM Learning, she hopes to convey her enthusiasm for STEM and STEAM to young audiences. This has included work for The Prince’s Trust. Ahrani completed WISE Campaign’s “People Like Me” training to help encourage girls to study STEM subjects. She is often invited to speak at events and at schools. Including a “Learning From Leaders” panel for City Year UK and a Women In STEAM event organised by Northampton University. She has been invited by the University of Leeds (University of the Year 2017) to speak on a Leadership panel as part of her Woman of Influence role in February 2018.

Ahrani grew up watching science programmes on TV and believes her interest in this area evolved from this. She loves Space. She believes that STEAM is the future. She is passionate about generating interest and engagement for kids in these areas. As owner of a Newtonian telescope, she truly believes in shooting for the stars!

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Brett’s earliest inspirations came when he got a personal computer and became engrossed in learning how to write software and playing the exciting and new (at the time) games that were driven by rich story and interactivity (special thanks to Richard Garriott).

Brett spent his weekends and evenings looking up to the stars in wonder, so he joined a local astronomy club. He grew up endlessly fighting with his older brother for screen time to watch science shows or recorded episodes of Doctor Who.. Brett is a self-professed geek.

Brett was very fortunate to have parents that were driven to risk it all in a number of business ventures. From age 12 he worked for the family business. This early inspiration led Brett to start a software consulting business while in college that led him into the early throes of his career.

Ever-restless, Brett found that he was most inspired by vertical innovation and during the early dot-com era, he co-founded and managed a ground transportation startup that would go on to become a successful nationwide technology innovator in ground transportation.

During this time, he also founded or co-founded other businesses, from technology, to social media and consulting.

Brett took a working sabbatical to manage a governor’s campaign in his home state of Illinois because Brett believes strongly in supporting good people for public office. In the case of this campaign, the candidate was a transparency and open-government advocate, having launched what became the most successful transparency movement in Illinois’ history.

After hitting the campaign trail, Brett returned to his geeky roots in technical leadership and software engineering. He spent time building a large social media following, promoting STEAM education and his interests in space exploration, technology, science and general geekery. Brett is an enthusiastic NASA Social contributor. He can also be found managing global software development and testing teams.

Follow @brett7three