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Martha Lane Fox
Martha Lane Fox, UK Digital Champion
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Ben Burry
Ben Burry-a-gram
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Jen Bolton
Jen Bolton-a-gram
3D printed toys and games start-up MakieLab today announces the appointment of Martha Lane Fox, the UK’s Digital Champion, as Chair of the London-based company.
Lane Fox has founded several entertainment and leisure-based companies, including the UK's leading online travel & leisure retailer Lastminute.com and the luxury karaoke brand LuckyVoice.com. One of the UK’s strongest advocates for digital literacy, Martha founded and Chairs the charity ‘Go ON UK’, a radical cross-sector partnership that has set itself an extraordinary challenge: to bring the benefits of the internet to every individual and every organisation in every community across the UK.
Martha also sits on the boards of Marks & Spencer and Mydeco.com. “Having Martha as our chair is an amazing privilege, and a complete delight,” said Alice Taylor, Founder and CEO of MakieLab. “We’re inspired by her commitment to all things internet, her incredible marketing expertise, and her passion for new frontiers. She’ll keep us pushing at boundaries and her expertise will be invaluable as we grow and diversify.”
“It’s rare to find a start-up that combines the disruption of a whole industry, a fabulous consumer facing product and an extremely strong team, but MakieLab does all three,” said Lane Fox. “I’m absolutely delighted that they wanted me as their Chair - even if it means my house is now full of 3D printed toys!” Ben Burry, former lead of the Moshi Monsters platform team at Mind Candy, brings a wealth of engineering and systems-building experience to his new role as Senior Developer at MakieLab.
Ben has held a series of senior development roles since 2003, and has been instrumental in launching several interactive projects including the launch of Moshi Monsters, ‘We Tell Stories’ (with Six to Start) and Mind Candy’s Perplex City. He has also consulted on web development and systems architecture for massive consumer sites such as FT.com. Jen Bolton is confirmed as MakieLab’s Communications Director starting in October. An advisor to MakieLab since its founding, Jen joins from ICO Partners, where she has overseen high profile online games PR accounts including NHN Corporation and Riot Games, and provided communications consultancy to a variety of indie game studios and AAA developer/publishers.
Previously, she worked as Head of Community for NCsoft in Brighton, supervising the European community teams for all NCsoft's games including Guild Wars, City of Heroes and Aion.
