Darain’s aversion to confined spaces took root during a fateful screening of ‘Buried,’ a film that immerses its audience in the gripping horror of a man awakening to find himself entombed alive. This intense fear of tight space has left an indelible mark on him. Beyond his mild-claustrophobic tendencies, Darain is also Co-founder of People Like Us, and former Director of Marketing at jobs behemoth LinkedIn internationally. Before his decade+ at LinkedIn, he resided in Australia where ran comms for WWF’s Earth Hour, and MySpace (remember them?). He’s a regular on Marketing Week + PR Week top 100, has won a raft of industry recognition including the coveted Cannes Lions. But he’s more than his titles and his accolades, he’s a die-hard Kylie Minogue fan too. He has three lively kids and lives in Fiji (yup, you read that right). He also likes to take his shirt off at regular intervals (check out his ‘gram… or better still – don’t).

What could be scarier than being stuck in a toilet cubicle with a wasp nest? Not much for our founder Mike (maybe having his face on a website) but definitely not making our industry fairer. He’s a northerner with Irish and Italian roots. In his 15 years in PR, he’s been a Senior Director of Assembly, head of consumer comms at Snap and a tech & gaming lead at Hope&Glory PR, winning over 50 industry awards. He’s also a former recruiter, the founder of the One Percent diversity initiative and co-founder of the PR Week Pay Gap Project. He’s been called a lot of things, but he’d call himself a problem solver. 

Sheeraz has both a fear and deep fascination of life after death. To face it, he’s taking solace by learning about the origin of world religions and reading the (not so) comforting words of many philosophers. Bit deep, but he’ll be fine, we promise.

Beyond his flirting with existential crises, Sheeraz is co-founder of People Like Us, the award winning non-profit that celebrates and supports professionals from underrepresented backgrounds in journalism, PR and the creative industries. Sheeraz is also an award winning PR professional with over a decade of experience both in-house at Snapchat and Sky, and at agencies including Hope&Glory and PrettyGreen. Sheeraz is a passionate campaigner for equal pay for ethnically diverse working professionals in the UK. He will often mention the one time someone said his celebrity lookalike is Riz Ahmed but in actual fact, he looks more like Bruno Fernandes (minus the sass). Top geezer all round.