User:Paulchristianbell/sandbox

PAUL CHRISTIAN BELL
Paul Bell, the South African communications consultant and former journalist, lives in London where he specialises in the use of multi-media communications campaigning to help governments and organisations globally to ameliorate conflict and promote democracy.

Born in London, Bell was educated at the South African College School and the University of Cape Town, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in History and Political Studies. On graduation he won the class medal and a prize for the best undergraduate contribution to the history of Cape Town for his dissertation on War and Society and the First World War record of the masters and boys of the Diocesan College Cape Town.

His subsequent career has enabled him to observe at close quarters, and to support, two major national transitions to democracy – one in South Africa, where he reported extensively on the protracted collapse of apartheid and interviewed many of the leading political actors of the time, including Nelson Mandela and F W de Klerk. The other was in post-Saddam Iraq where he built and ran the US-led Coalition’s largest communications campaign, which ran from 2004 to 2011. Among its most notable achievements was its propaganda defeat of the Al-Qaeda insurgency in Anbar province – discrediting the organisation, damaging its morale, turning the local population against it, and encouraging tribal leaders to mount an armed resistance against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. On leaving university he joined South African Associated Newspapers and worked for the Rand Daily Mail, where he became news editor, from 1977 to 1985 when the paper was closed. He was appointed Political Correspondent of Business Day, where he reported on the first secret talks between the then-exiled African National Congress and South African business leaders.

In 1986 he joined an advertising consortium as project manager of the Shell Road To Fame, a nationwide talent search which the consortium ran in South Africa’s violence-ridden townships at the height of the political emergency and a cultural boycott. In 1987 he returned to journalism, writing several chapters of a Reader’s Digest History of South Africa, then joining Leadership, an influential monthly political and business journal, where he worked until 1999.

In 1993 he left Leadership temporarily and returned to daily journalism, working as Labour Correspondent for the Johannesburg afternoon daily, The Star, where he covered the momentous events leading to the signing of the interim constitution, which he witnessed at 3am on 18 November 1993. In 1994 he was asked to serve as Director of Information for the Independent Electoral Commission. Here he developed and led the IEC’s communications campaign during the run-up to the country’s first democratic elections, and served as an adviser on electoral communications management to the South African Ministry of Constitutional Development. In 1995 he rejoined Leadership and a year later led the team of writers, designers and editors that produced Cape Town's official Candidature File for its bid to host the Olympic Games. During the next four years he twice won South Africa's national Mondi magazine award.

In 2000 Bell joined the Bell Pottinger Group in London where his clients included DaimlerChrysler, the US consulting firm Bain & Co, JCB, Standard Chartered Bank, British Airways, Go, and Emirates, the Chief Medical Officer of the National Health Service, BP, the Government of Botswana, the Leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament, and various political figures in Latvia, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Turkey. In 2004 Bell took charge of the Group’s special operations in the Middle East, building a specialised practice in support of programmes aimed at promoting democracy, countering violent extremism, and aiding conflict transformation and nation-building. This included building and directing, in Iraq, what became the largest, most complex and sensitive private sector-driven communications campaign ever launched in a theatre of conflict.

In 2008 he was appointed chief executive of Bell Pottinger Sans Frontieres, the Group’s team of lead consultants and specialists in geo-political campaigning, reputation management, and integrated communications – a team of more than 70 spread across the UK, US, Europe and the Middle East. Two years later he was appointed Chief Executive of the Group, and subsequently Deputy Chairman.

In 2010 he developed a consortium between Bell Pottinger and Albany Associates that saw the two companies develop a joint operation in Somalia which, on behalf of the United Nations, supports the African Mission to Somalia and the country’s Transitional Federal Government. In 2012 Bell joined the board of Albany, which specializes in communications strategies and solutions in challenging and transitional environments, to concentrate on his core communications practice in the conflict, democracy and development arena.